Yes, I know, I’m ready for the new year, too. But I was curious: which writing series got the most visits here on my blog last year?

A quick dig through my analytics gave me the answer, and I wanted to share what I found with you! (Did you know I had more than ten series here? Yep, despite the fact that I haven’t made them into PDFs in forever and the Writing Guides page doesn’t have most of them.)

11. Dialogue
An overview of the mechanics and technique of writing good fictional dialogue.

10. Clues in non-mysteries
A new series in 2011, here we looked at how to balance foreshadowing—making sure it’s enough but not too much.

9. Character arcs
By request, we looked at character arcs in fiction, showing growth and change in our characters. I’ve actually used this series while I was preparing for Nano, and I have some new thoughts to bring to this series this year.

8. Bad advice
I have had (and currently have) some great critique partners—but I’ve also received my share of off-the-wall awful advice. Here’s how to tell the difference and take the bad in stride (more or less 😉 ).

7. Aspiring Author Websites
Setting up a website as an aspiring author: is it worth it? I think so! This series talks about how to do it, and what to put on your site. We’ll be seeing more of this with our new Marketing Mondays.

6. Emotion: it’s tough
Even when reading escapist fluff (which is okay!), people read to make emotional connections with characters. Fiction without emotion is flat—but emotion can be hard to write. Here are some ideas and tips in one of two series on this list from 2011. (They might be the only two series I wrote last year…)

5. Backstory
Another one I think about a lot still, and have some more posts in store this year. Backstory is vital, but it’s most interesting and useful to the author. In this series, I discuss why that is—and how to slip the backstory into the real story at the right place and in the right way.

4. Creating Sympathetic Characters
One of our first series, we looked at how to get readers to identify with your characters—even when they’re unlikeable.

3. Deep POV (x3)
Deep POV is the most popular narration mode today. Here’s how to get into your characters’ heads and write through their eyes.

To find ten unique series listed in here, I had to sift through more than ten lines of data. Deep POV was so popular that it had three pages in the top 20 or so series pages!

2. Tension, Suspense and Surprise (x3!)
Tension is vital in fiction. I’ve learned this the hard way and now I look for ways to get it in every scene, in every page. Here are some of the best ways I’ve found to do this.

1. Plot Thickens (x5!!)
A look at several methods of creating and structuring plots—the top series on this site for three years in a row!

I think this year I’ll try to work to get more of these top series compiled into PDFs.

What’s your favorite series? What subjects would you like covered, or re-covered this year?