The Daily Port of Call: June 4, 2014

Photo by Alexander Lvov/bigstockphoto.com

In today’s Daily Port of Call, you’ll find strategies for working in chaos, how to make life worse for your protagonist, and a checklist to make your characters jump off the page.

Steven Pressfield shares his strategies for working in chaos. The first is “work in the cracks.”

Discover the hidden power of layering the right desires in your story.

How do you make life more interesting (worse) for your protagonist in an organic manner?

Use this checklist from James Scott Bell to make your characters jump off the page.

Here are three suggestions for writing a great short story.

Problogger shares six things to do with your blog posts after you hit publish.

Here are ten lessons learned from a year of productivity experiments. “The three most effective tips are also the most boring.”

The Daily Port of Call: June 3, 2014

Photo by Alexander Lvov/bigstockphoto.com

In today’s Daily Port of Call, you’ll find the trick to inhabiting your character’s POV, three blog posts on perseverance, and Chuck Wendig’s take on Amazon vs. Hatchette.

“The trick to inhabiting a POV character's consciousness more persuasively is to understand the character's obsession. What can the character not not see?” Do you know your character’s obsession?

Make sure your indie book isn’t violating copyright laws.

Here are three blog posts on perseverance: how to keep writing no matter what is happening.

Chuck Wendig weighs in on the conflicts between Amazon and Hachette and offers some advice: “We should think about books less as personal entertainment devices or as content blobs and think of them as parts of a whole—as parts of a culture beyond just self-satisfaction. Thus we support stories and storytellers all around the world. Books: vital for our mind as food is vital for our bodies.”

Here are suggestions for when life forces you to work outside your own writing boxes.

Discover fifteen secrets to writing great fiction from George R. R. Martin.

Using the internet for research or to find sources? Check out these fourteen Google search tricks to make your quest easier.

Here are twenty-five words that are their own opposites.