theoatmeal.com I’d never heard of this site until last week, when Alistair sent me the below link after searching for man-eating bears, hairy-knuckled women and high-fiving dinosaurs, which is a typical Saturday night for him. Well, not only can you find all three of those things on this site, it even throws in some useful [...]
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Terry Bisson has a guest post on facebook that lists 60 rules for writing Fantasy and Science Fiction short stories, every one of which is pretty much dead on. I’ve posted the first ten rules below, but you can find the rest of the list here. A “mainstream” short story can be about anything: a [...]
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You think you’re having a tough time finishing that book? Get a load of these successful people, and the rigors of their life. These are people with life-altering conditions, and they’re still churning out some solid work. I also learned some time back that one of the biggest authors in the country, Laura Hillenbrand, has [...]
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Alistair pointed this out to me, and frankly, I think it’s a fascinating article. John Scalzi, the author of Old Man’s War among other books, and the subject of Alistair’s unhealthy, stalkerish affection, compares his writing output over the last several years to George R.R. Martin’s writing output, who famously took YEARS to finish his [...]
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Just a few notes for you aspiring authors out there on upcoming submission deadlines and conferences: Dragon Moon Press has an open submission period in December, and they’re looking for full-length novels. Read below for more info… Dragon Moon Press website Submissions are open December 1, 2011 – December 31, 2011. What we’re looking for: [...]
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Here’s a link I just had to pass on for all of our burgeoning fantasy writers (ahem… including myself). It’s a fun little exam that forces you to answer whether or not you’re just ripping off some other famous fantasy work in your upcoming book. Ever since J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis created the worlds [...]
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Here’s a tip from a blog I recently discovered called grammardivas.com, specifically about an issue that affects my writing pretty heavily… then & and then sentences. A lot of writers will join two clauses, two separates smaller sentences or ideas, with a comma followed by ‘then’. Is that correct? Should it be ‘and then’? Should [...]
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This one isn’t so much a tip as it is an editorial about how some writers can work faster than others and some of the methods they use to do that. I like this article a lot because I’m one of the slow writers, and I feel like I’m surrounded by fast writers who can [...]
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Creating a worthy villain for your story is always a challenge, but fortunately, there are some pretty standard guidelines to crafting a good one. I’ve got two articles today, from two different sites, both giving some tips on crafting your villain. Here’s the first article over at The Graveyard Shift. Villains are used to create [...]
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This article from Writing-World.com is especially important for new writers, because it tackles the problem of passive writing. I can remember learning about this concept at my very first writer’s group meeting. I learned that words like had, was, to be, etc. were all examples of passive writing, and the reader could be much more [...]
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