A new short story has been brewing in my head for the past few days. So, for today's Wednesday Prompt, I decided to just jot down a random something in the universe of this new short story, featuring one of the main characters (the First Crosswalker). Below is the result. This is meant to be a type of backstory, I suppose, or maybe even a lead-in to what will be the actual story eventually. Not entirely sure yet. But I had a lot of fun with this, and I'm really looking forward to getting on ... View Post
The First Rule of Write Club is: You Do Not Use "Thought" Verbs
I don't usually do stuff like this, where I simply link directly to or simply copy and paste articles into a blog post. Usually I add them straight to my Resources page and stop there. Or summarize the main points after they've been strained through my own personal brain filter. But every now and then there comes some advice that strikes me in such a way with its utter brilliance that I just have to share, and share directly. This is one of those instances. The following was emailed to ... View Post
Another Belated Writing Prompt Wednesday: "Starting from Chekhov", a writing exercise.
So I completely forgot that Wednesday was Wednesday this week. Just bear with me folks, I'll get my brain back in order one of these days! I meant to share this exercise a long time ago but then forgot about it, too, so now that I am remembering things again, I thought this would be as good a time as any to finally post it! The following is the result of a writing exercise done during the New Letters Writing Workshop at the University of Missouri- Kansas City. We were to take the ... View Post
Lessons from Nora Roberts: From Lovers and Labels to Dialogue and Description…
I have a confession: I have never been into romance books.I read one in college at the bequest of my roommate and while I did actually enjoy it, and it was a well-written and engaging (while generally cliché) story, I just never bothered to pick up any more afterward. I don't even remember the name of the book or author now.I am almost exclusively a sci-fi and fantasy girl. Sometimes a literary fiction, sometimes a non-fiction. But mostly just sci-fi and fantasy, whether adult or young ... View Post
11 Most Important Revelations for My Writing Life (and Sanity)
You don't have to tell readers everything. Not only should you avoid info-dumping your poor readers in the beginning of the story, you should avoid info-dumping your readers AT ALL TIMES. Remember - bring out world details through action and dialogue - NOT description and exposition! Sprinkle these tidbits throughout - icing is tasty, true, but good lord, no one wants a fist-sized glob of icing all at once! Even as the author, you don't have to know EVERYTHING about your own story. ... View Post
What I Learned from my Writer's Digest Workshop…
In case some of you weren't aware, I recently enrolled in a Writer's Digest online workshop. It began October 4th and ended December 27th of 2012. It was entitled "12 Weeks to a First Draft", and consisted of 12 assignments, each of 2- 2500 words, which were submitted weekly for individual critique by the instructor, a published career author or a literary agent. In my case the instructor was Stephen Mertz, who has published over 30 books in his ... View Post
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