A great resource including printable template:
One of the oldest tools in the arsenal of writers is the modest and unassuming index card. It’s used for jotting notes, sharing phone numbers, creating bibliographies, capturing ideas, making lists, and –heck– even making indices. (Who would have thought?) But one of its primary uses, especially for people structuring stories, is in creating a plot outline. A pen, a table top, and a small stack of cards are all that’s needed to turn a mish-mash of incongruent or half-baked ideas into a plot that’s …

I ran across this post from Dave Long on a non-contrived way to describe prayer.
The prayer that follows is in narrative form. This is very important, I
feel. Too often, writers feel compelled to put prayer into dialogue. It
is spoken out loud or in the mind, but it comes out word for word.
Personally, I feel this misses the point of prayer, which isn’t
necessarily the words said, but what is truly meant. Narrative allows
the meaning of the prayer, what God hears, to be shared with the
reader. It’s a nice little trick and …

Evangelicals get the lion’s share of coverage in the CBA market. But what about Roman Catholic fiction? Flannery O’Connor and J.R.R. Tolkien are two notable writers whose Catholic identity is integral to their writing. Other Catholic literature is finding mainstream distribution.
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This is a VERY cool technique to take notes on books without actually writing within the book, dog-earing pages, etc.

I thought I might as well document one of my little “life hacks”.
1. When I start a new book I stick a few post-its on the first page inside the cover. That way there’s always some paper around to write notes on.
2. When I fill up a post-it I move it, either to the inside back cover or the inside front cover.
3. The added benefit of using post-its is that when …