Missed out on Day 1 of Plotting? Catch up here! There’s also Day 2. Way, way back when I was a very newbie writer and had never completed more than the very occasional short story, I was part of a critique group on Critique Circle. We went through a stage of doing weekly short story challenges […]
Plotting #3: Case Study – How Not To Take Over The World Read More »
Missed out on Day 1 of Plotting? Catch up here! There’s also Day 2, Day 3 and Day 4. Whoa, day 5 of plotting! So pretty much all I’m going to do today is provide a quick wrap-up, including an overview of the main points discussed in yesterday’s video. If you haven’t had a chance to watch it, besides
Plotting #5: It’s A Wrap Read More »
Missed out on Day 1 of Plotting? Catch up here! There’s also Day 2 and Day 3. Today, the climax this has all been building towards. A couple of weeks ago I was super excited to able to visit Liana in Alaska (!!!!), and while I was there, Much Plotting Occurred. We plotted 6 novel/las that week, I
Plotting #4: Live Replot Read More »
Reminder that the Darkness&Good free (unedited) short story blog is functioning again now that we’ve added author Thea van Diepen to our ranks, woohoo! Today is part of my Russian steampunk assassin story, One Bad Man 🙂 Let me know if you like it and I’ll post more next time <3 Read more:How To Theme:
One Bad Man – New Darkness&Good Short Story Read More »
Missed out on Day 1 of Plotting? Catch up here! Okay, so, yesterday I confessed to you my secret nightmare as a writer: structure. Not because I resent being constrained by arbitrary rules or whatever, but because actually, after reading a crap-tonne of new-writer stories in the last ten years, I have a healthy appreciation
Plotting #2: Beat Sheets Read More »
Being an English teacher is good for my writer ego. I used to think that probably I was just *stupid* for all the beginner mistakes I made – but going on seven years of high school* English teaching where students usually have to complete one creative response per semester, I’ve marked over 1100 creative responses that
Plotting #1: My Biggest Flaw As A Writer Read More »
Dialogue punctuation is something I really harp on about to my students, because there are a lot of rules in fiction, and you can break every single one of them if you have a good reason – except dialogue. Yeah, okay, I know there are some big-name authors out there who DO break the rules
Heya! Just popping by on my way to America to– Wait, what? AMERICA?!?! Oh, yeah. Didn’t I tell you that? I’m pretty sure I mentioned it on Twitter at least (once, or twice – a day… O:))… SO. I’M GOING TO AMERICA. LIKE, TOMORROW.* WHOOOOOOOOOA!!! I’m visiting the glorious Krista Ball for two nights, then
LOST WOLF (Cool Book) + American Travel + Giveaway Read More »
So, a while ago I started the map-building series as a backlash against All Those Authors that get it Wrong, and as an attempt to prevent that happening in the future. I’ve talked about the very fundamental stuff – the underlying structure of the world, the fun you can have with hotspots and volcanos –
How To Build A World From The Ground Up Week 5: Hot and Cold, Wet and Dry Read More »
I mentioned volcanos very briefly in the last post in this series in talking about where mountains are usually formed. Often, the volcanos appear where one plate is sliding under another, forcing the upper plate even up-er, and providing a weak spot for all that yummy magma and lava to come spewing out. Yay, fire
How To Build A World From The Ground Up Week 4: And Then It Exploded Read More »
