Often novel writing, especially with fantasy books, is about using a setting you can’t see. Some people are fortunate enough to plan a trip for their novels. I’ve never been that fortunate. I have traveled a lot, though. In The Sciell’s Legacy, the 4th and final book in The Merging Read more…
We all have those moments while creating a novel or short story when we think our current work-in-progress is terrible. No one will want to read it and if they do, they’re going to hate it. Those thoughts should be put in the garbage where they belong. They do not Read more…
I abandoned one book because I realized halfway through that I hadn’t read most of it. The story seemed to be 90% filler. I skipped it all because I was waiting for the book to get the point. 50% in, no point in sight. Classic case of an interesting story Read more…
“The great mass of trees looked like a tomb, in which my house lay buried.” (from Who Knows? by Guy de Maupassant) It’s lines like the one above that get me excited about writing and reading haunted stories. You can’t just describe a location, you have to do it in Read more…
There’s a lot of advice out there for fantasy writers. It comes from a lot of different places: agents, publishers, editors, writing professors, bloggers, and authors. They’ll tell you the magic formula for creating a compelling, “good” story. They’ll give you a laundry list of do’s and don’t’s. As a Read more…
There’s a ton of advice out there on how to deal with bad reviews. They like to say “dwell on the good reviews.” What if you don’t have any glowing reviews to off-set the negative/indifferent ones? I’ve been having this problem. It’s not something I talk about much because I Read more…
Funny how December can turn a beautiful park into something out of a horror movie. I braved the NY cold over the weekend to take some pics. It wasn’t too bad…at the start. I wore gloves, but I couldn’t change my camera setting or zoom with them on. I had Read more…
Thanks for your comments on my previous post Beta Readers. Gave me something to think about. +Damien Boath also suggested I divide my 200,000+ word manuscript into several books. It stuck with me. It’s an excellent idea! I’ve been trying to figure out how and if this will work with Read more…
It’s interesting, I’m coming across authors who separate good writing and good storytelling. I always thought those writing rules were making me a better storyteller. You can follow every rule and still write a crappy book. You can commit the most horrendous of writing sins and your book becomes a Read more…
No info-dump, show- don’t tell, avoid adverbs, no passive voice, beware of repetitions. You’ve probably come across these writing rules. We treat them like the unbreakable rules. This is Writing 101. Are they as important as we make them out to be? I’m currently reading a book that had a Read more…