NO, I do NOT mean a GMC car!!! You don't know what else I could possibly mean by GMC?!??! You think your characters are just bodies to occupy your awesomely fantastic setting or move through your utterly original and mind-blowing plot!???!? WRONG!!!!! WRONG WRONG WRONG!!! Failing on the CHARACTER LEVEL will make your entire book FAIL!! THAT'S RIGHT! I don't care how awesome your setting is or how mind-blowing your plot!!!! Without fully realized and FLAWED characters, your book will go ... View Post
NaNoWriMo BOOT CAMP! Lesson One: PREPARATION MATTERS!
OH, so you thought NaNoWriMo started in NOVEMBER, did you!?! WRONG! NaNoWriMo starts NOW, RIGHT NOW! The secret to success in this venture is PLANNING!!! PLANNING, people. "But I'm a PANTSER!" you say??? NOT THIS MONTH YOU AIN'T!!!! Writing 50k words of aimless story you'll just have to rewrite later DOESN'T COUNT. You don't want to go through the agony that is NaNoWriMo and then just have to turn around and SCRAP most of what you just sweated and bled!!! Only newbies jump into NaNo without at ... 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
WRITE WHAT YOU LOVE. PERIOD.
Has your writing been stuck in a rut lately? Feeling completely uninspired? Dreading opening up that document to stare unproductively again for hours at that blinking cursor? Then maybe it's time to re-evaluate the project in question. Ask yourself WHAT IS THE POINT you want to get across in that work? What is the driving force behind the whole thing? What is the message you want people to take away with them after reading? If these questions draw blanks in your mind, truly take a little ... View Post
Castles in the Sky
*** When I was young (and by that I mean in middle school) and this whole notion and practice of writing novel-length original stories was still brand new to me, I found myself utterly fascinated with the entire process. I found it startling that I could begin a page having no idea what would follow, and yet after a few sentences were jotted down based on my vague idea of what should happen next, the story poured out with very little effort on my part. That didn't mean it was always entirely ... View Post
The Three Ideas – Origins
I have more than three ideas in mind as of this moment, but there are three specific ones I'd like to concentrate on for this 'first round' of serious writing. I picked these three because they are the ones that have been floating around in my head the longest, and they are the three that are the closest to actually having a roughly complete plotline.Actually, none of them really have a plotline even close to complete. Because I find it impossible ... View Post
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