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We let them in: The login scams

I've known about the various scams that exist within the internet and telecommunications realm for years.

You have the ransom scam, where you receive an email stating that they have some photographic evidence of you doing something dodgy and they want to be paid in bitcoin.

There are the phone scammers, who pretend that they are Microsoft or some other company, and want remote access to your computer. These scams are also known as malware scams. (I'll come back to malware scams in a future post, because unfortunately a friend of mine fell prey to this scam in 2021, and it cost her dearly.)

But you also get the txt/email login scams where you receive a txt message (or email... or some other notice) saying that there are some unusual transactions on your account, asking that you click the link to verify. (My own husband fell prey to one of these a few months ago.)

All of these scams are fishing for the person who is trusting and doesn't know any differently. We want to believe the best in people, and the scammers are out there to take advantage of that. And it seems like technology has given con artists new ways to be inventive with their scamming. And the scammers are smart.

Today, I want to discuss the login scams, mainly because it was this type of scam that my husband fell prey to a few months ago. It could have been easily avoided if he had been paying attention—which he wasn't—but there are other steps that you can take to protect your systems even if you are duped by the login scams.

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Goal Setting with a Theme

When setting goals, we are told to use SMART goals: Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic, and Timely. We are encouraged to define our goals with clearly defined constraints and requirements to achieve the goals (specific), using something that we can measure our progress against (measurable). While it's important to dream big, we should never set ourselves up to fail by shooting for the stars from word go when there are a lot of little steps that we need to take along the way (attainable and realistic), and we need to put time limits on those goals (timely).

While I strongly believe in the ethos behind using SMART goals, it's the R in SMART that I believe is a little troublesome.

Commonly, I'll see R as Realistic, but I think Relevant is a better word to use. We might set a goal based on a certain task, but does that task have a purpose that is in service to our long-term hopes and dreams? For example, building that active Twitter following probably won't be of any help to the writer whose target audience is filled with young readers.

Today, I want to talk about shifting our SMART goals into something that has a stronger relevance to not only our hopes and dreams, but with our subconscious motivations too.

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Book Doctor

8 Common Structural Issues Within Fiction

I have edited many manuscripts over the years, and there are common flaws that I see come across my desk. I see some issues so often that when I see them, I struggle to unsee them. But all issues that I see are fixable. Exactly how they are fixed will depend on what the writer wants to achieve with their story.

In today's post, I want to discuss some of the common structural issues that I see, providing insights into why they happen. And it's not just a matter of understanding the beats of a story—though that is a huge part of it. It's really about the rise and fall of action and understanding reader expectations.

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3 common “tell” constructions and how to turn them into “show”

So many writers are fond of reciting the mantra "show, don't tell" like it's some holy passage that will lead writers to the land of glory. New writers hear this being said and are always left wondering what it really means.

When I first started writing fiction, nearly twenty years ago now, I too was confused beyond belief.

"Describe the action. Describe how the character is reacting." Wasn't that what I was doing?

It actually took a fellow writer who writes fantasy to explain it to me—properly.

Imagine your book being turned into a movie or television series (the ultimate dream of most fantasy writers). A scriptwriter is going to take your book and fashion it into a script where the only way to get an insight into a character is through their actions. How true that scriptwriter remains to your book will be related to how much show you give them to work with.

And trust me when I say that seeing your words of descriptions transformed into the visual format is an incredibly satisfying feeling. (I've had commissioned artwork done based on lines of my manuscripts.)

I have written about the concepts of show vs tell before in Show the story. Tell the ride through the countryside.  and in Is First-Person Really More Intimate?

Today, I want to take this from a different perspective, explaining how to identify a tell statement and how you might transform it into one of show.

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Woman reading on a tablet

Promises to the Reader in the Opening Pages

In the beginning sections of a story, the first pages or chapters, the writer gives a promise to the reader about the nature of the story that they are about to read. There will be a hint of the genre, the pacing of the story, what the story is about, and the way the story will be told (the narrative construction). In fact, the reader should be fully aware of the nature of the story they are reading by the time they hit the 25% mark (or thereabouts)—ideally earlier. This doesn't mean that they should know 100% what the twists and turns will be, but they should know what the main story is and what sort of experience to expect.

If your story is going to be a high-octane thriller, then there needs to be action in those early scenes. If you are writing a sweet contemporary romance, then we should have met the main characters in this romantic coupling and already be able to see those sparks between the characters—even if they want to kill each other in the beginning. And if your story is going to contain religious or political overtones, then those overtones need to be present early too.

Today, I want to talk about the promises that we make to the reader with the opening pages of our books. It's the promise of the premise.

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