This last weekend Baz Luhrmann’s film The Great Gatsby premiered in American theaters. I haven’t had a chance to get to the theater to see it, but I will probably do that soon. School is winding down and soon I will have the summer to write, do editing projects, and spend time with my family doing … Continue reading »
Filed under Writing Tips …
New Podcast Up: The Writing Slump
In this exciting new podcast we discuss the problems of the writing slump…and Roger confesses to not writing for a WEEK! We also discuss the following story and how it is a sad example of people fearing what they do not understand. You can find the podcast here.
Your Blog Is Too Cerebral
d There is a famous story about Gene Roddenberry’s pitch to NBC about his “wagon train to the stars” idea he ended up calling Star Trek. He told them that it would be a space adventure and that each episode would focus on some kind of deep philosophical or allegorical idea that commented on something that … Continue reading »
Writing When You Don’t Want To Write
So there you are. You’ve had a hard day at the day job, you’re kids need help with homework, it’s your night to prepare a meal for your family, you need to spend some quality time with a roulette of family members and you just don’t feel like writing. What to do? That novel isn’t … Continue reading »
W is for So What?
As a teacher of analytical writing, I often have to ask my students to think about an argument by first stating their opinion about the argument and then asking themselves the question: “So what?” This applies to writing pros as well. So you’ve written that awesome fantasy novel crammed with all the lovely creatures, characters … Continue reading »
20 Useful Tips for Writing a Novel
Today I decided to compile a list of one line tips that help me keep focused on writing and observations I have made since gaining a literary agent. Here they are in no particular order: Don’t play video games. 1000 words a day is healthy. Make time for your family….but not too much. Write a … Continue reading »
2 A-Z Posts in 1: Plagiarism and “The Fantasy Novelist’s Quiz”
Yesterday I came home to post my new blog post only to find that our DSL service was out of order. Apparently, a couple of local bumpkins had decided to build a fence and while digging post holes cut directly through the line. I was bummed because since we live in such a remote location … Continue reading »
Narrator No-No
In the many years of writing fiction, I have discovered about twenty ways to narrate a story, most of them huge mistakes for the flow of the story I am trying to tell. Since landing an agent, I found out that there are also some narrator types or mistakes that are off-putting to modern readers … Continue reading »
Falkontheorie Gone?
German writer Paul Heyse (1830-1914) based his theory of Falkontheorie on the ninth tale of the fifth day of the Decamaron. The tale is about a man who sacrificed everything for the love of a woman and when he still rejected her he then sacrificed his prize falcon as well, thereby winning her heart. The idea or … Continue reading »
Emotive Dialogue
Yesterday I recorded our latest podcast for Fanboys on Fiction, and during the conversation, Ryan McKinley brought up the devilish problem of using “he said/she said” in dialogue passages. This made me think of a good way that we could remove these redundant story killers from our dialogue and in the process make that dialogue more … Continue reading »
