“Place has a more lasting identity than we have.” —Eudora Welty, The Eye of the Story A novel can have a perfectly clear setting and still feel as though the story could happen almost anywhere. You may know the town, the season, the landscape, or the rules of an invented world. You may even have…
“The greater the obstacle, the greater the glory in overcoming it.” — Molière You can create a character you understand deeply and still have a story that feels strangely flat. The protagonist may be interesting. Her history may make sense. Her relationships may have emotional depth. But if she has no strong reason to act,…
“Character is destiny.” — Heraclitus A character can have a name, age, occupation, appearance, personality traits, hobbies, family history, and several pages of backstory and still feel flat. I have learned that adding more information does not necessarily create a strong character, one with more depth. Sometimes it simply creates a longer character profile. What…
“Ideas are like rabbits. You get a couple and learn how to handle them, and pretty soon you have a dozen.” — John Steinbeck A novel idea may arrive with almost everything attached. You can see the main character, the problem, the setting, and several scenes before you write a word. Another novel idea may…
“What a computer is to me is it’s the most remarkable tool that we have ever come up with.” — Steve Jobs AI can give you more ideas than you could ever use. It can suggest characters, plot turns, conflicts, settings, dialogue, scene possibilities, and solutions to problems you have been wrestling with for days….
“Quality means doing it right when no one is looking.” – Henry Ford Content repurposing can help you turn the ideas you have already developed into articles, emails, lead magnets, social posts, and other useful resources. Done well, it saves time while giving readers more opportunities to discover and benefit from your work. However, repurposing…
“Your brand’s content should project a consistent voice, tone, and style, no matter who—or what—writes it.” – Content Marketing Institute AI can help you keep your voice while turning a book chapter into an article, adapt a blog post into an email, create a checklist from a longer guide, or extract social content from one…
“Content is king, but context is God.” – Gary Vaynerchuk Many authors think content repurposing means taking one piece of content and posting the same information everywhere. That is not repurposing. That is repetition. True repurposing begins with one core idea and then adapts that idea for different formats, audiences, purposes, and stages of reader…
“Build it like a Lego sculpture, so you can take it apart without breaking the bricks.” – Ahava Leibtag, CEO, Aha Media Group A strong nonfiction book chapter may contain enough material for several website articles. It might include: That does not mean you should cut the chapter into equal sections and publish each section…
“Every good communication starts not with the message you want to send, but with a deep-rooted understanding of what your audience already thinks, feels, needs, and wants.” – Mark McShane, co-founder of Cupid PR You may already have more content than you realize. Your books, articles, newsletters, checklists, presentations, videos, and notes contain ideas that…