Follow along as I explore writing tips, techniques and methods..
Way back when, I used to play a story-based roleplay game set in the Star Trek universe. I never got into the nuts and bolts of Star Trek (I was just there for the writing), but I had time to […]
I’m an idea magpie, picking up bits of inspiration from everywhere (books, movies, songs, games, random conversations, etc), most of which find their way into my stories. Cold Between Stars is no exception. Below are two of the books and […]
Years ago, I came across a brilliant article by Jennifer Crusie. It was a writerly advice type article with a simple message, stop worrying about what everyone else is doing and write your book. It’s excellent advice. Now, quit reading […]
I love how many people have discovered the Worldbuilding Leviathan and I’m always quite chuffed (and just a little bit amazed) whenever someone drops me a line to tell me how useful they’ve found the template. One such person was Juan de la […]
Right under ‘title’ on Blake Snyder’s Beat Sheet, there’s a little box called ‘tag line’ (but should really be called ‘logline’), which, frankly, used to scare the whatsits out of me. What’s a logline? A logline is your short story, […]
Writing faster than greased lightning is one of the holy grails of writing, or, at least, it is in my world. The thought of being able to whip out a decent first draft in under two months makes me giddy, let […]
About the same time I revisted the BS2, Jami Gold posted an excellent article about using beat sheets with Scrivener. What I liked most about the article was the idea of using the target word count for individual chapters and […]
Best for those outling a new work. What’s awesome about it The word count for each beat What’s not-so-awesome It’s daunting, especially when your manuscript is half-written No capacity to outline subplots The awesome When I first came across Blake […]
Patricia C. Wrede’s Fantasy World-building questions are great, and the World-building Leviathan is equally awesome, but there are times when they just don’t hit the spot. Like, when you’re halfway (or more) into your novel and you need to sort […]
When a book has a title like First Draft in 30 Days, it can be hard to pass up. If it’s sitting on the shelf at your local library, passing it up is practically impossible, which is why I picked […]