Wednesday links: Getting lazy, too many main characters, and dramatic irony

I love regularly reading tips and advice articles in certain subjects — particularly writing and publishing. I don’t always need the information right then, but I know that it’ll eventually come in handy. Or at least, I hope it will.

I know there are a lot of other people out there who feel the same way I do, but sometimes it can be difficult to find every useful advice article that’s out there. So I thought I’d bring you a few. Since I took advantage of the holiday and didn’t post last Wednesday, here are the tips and advice articles that jumped out at me the most over the past two weeks.

1. 5 Ways Writers Get Lazy, from Jody Hedlund: Once you’ve written a few novels, you may find that you’ve started to fall into some bad writing habits. It’s important that you stay aware of them and do your best to avoid or fix them. Excerpt: “However, expectations placed upon us by publishers, readers, or even our genre shouldn’t hinder multi-published authors from striving to keep things new. When we reach a point of having written numerous books, we have to continually push deeper into the recesses of our minds to find original, creative, and fresh material for our stories.”

2. Three signs that your novel has too many main characters — and what to do, from Nail Your Novel: Have you ever written a novel that has more than one main character? I certainly have. And I know the question of whether I’ve had too many has crossed my mind. Excerpt: “But it ain’t what you do. It’s the way you do it. Some of us can handle big casts; some can’t.”

3. What to Level Up Your Fiction? Take the “Dramatic Irony” Challenge!, from Helping Writers Become Authors: I learned about dramatic irony back in high school… and then completely forgot about it not long after I graduated. It was great to read through this little refresher. Excerpt: “There are stories that get the job done and entertain readers. And then there are stories that take everything to a new level. Naturally, we’d all like our own stories to be part of that second category!”