10 Writing Questions to Ask Yourself (from PaperFury)

These questions, like Beautiful Books, is courtesy of Paper Fury, who is coming out with her own book this year: A Thousand Perfect Notes.

1. What genre do you write in? If you write in different genres, what’s one you’d like to try that you haven’t yet or one you’d never bother with? I plan to write YA and NA in multiple genres, although so far it’s only been paranormal romance in The Belgrave Legacy trilogy. Some of the other ones I plan to dip into are YA dystopian romance (The Matchmakers),  YA contemporary (Fearful Fairytales), YA thriller, YA steampunk, NA contemporary romance, YA horror, NA historical romance, and NA SciFi romance… just to name a few. And a lot of those genres are series, so I have a lot of work ahead of me.
2. How do you pick your character names? Like Cait, I use nameberry.com and similar sites to look up names and often pick it based on meaning. Although sometimes I just pick a name that sounds pretty.
3. Tell me what you can about your current projects. Well, I’m currently working on finishing The Belgrave Legacy trilogy. Unmoored features a feminist siren and Taming the Alpha has a female alpha (hell, yeah!). My next project after those (which I will actually be returning to) is The Matchmakers and features a non-fighter as the main character in a dystopian world.
4. What number book is this? I wrote 2 shameless Nancy Drew rip-offs, then I published The Belgrave Daughter as its own book with the intention of The Belgrave Legacy being a trilogy only about Fawn and Caleb, and wrote Tears of an Angel and The Witch’s War as separate books. I turned out that I condensed all three of those stories into the published The Belgrave Legacy. So, that makes Unmoored my 7th book.
5. What are your writing goals for the year? Like Cait (again), I want to write 4 books and edit (and publish) at least 2 of them. But unlike my “violent writing machine” of a friend, I don’t quite have the time or the speed that she does so I may have gone slightly crazy when I set that goal. I guess we’ll see.
6. What are your writing strengths? Dialogue and writing in a way that hooks people. The latter is what I’ve been told by many people. I don’t always believe it, but I do know I’m good at dialogue.
7. Do you enjoy any other creative outlets? I read (though recently not as much as I’d like to) and I knit (although much less than I used to).
8. Your best tip for punching writer’s block? Writing every day, no matter what.
9. Who do you write for? Me, and other readers who like the same genres I do.
10. List 5 things you value in a story. Sympathetic characters (I don’t have to love them or even like what they do, but I have to at the very least be able to sympathize with them even if I simultaneously want to smack them with their own book). Good plot (stuff has to happen and it needs to be interesting or I’ll get bored. If it’s fast-paced, even better). Complex relationships (Clichés don’t piss me off as they probably should, but I hate one-note anything in a book: especially relationships). Good world building (slightly ironic since this is a major weak spot in my writing—at least in my opinion. I need to immerse myself in the book, and that requires good world building). And lastly a good message (I’m not talking about a moral like in  Aesop’s Fables or a hit-you-over-the-head lesson, but I want to come out of reading a book having learned something or at the very least being challenged to look at something from a different perspective).

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