Tweet Yesterday I didn’t show up to work until after lunch. I was really dragging, too. I wandered down the row between offices and cubicles, waving a half-hearted response to my coworkers’ enthusiastic greetings. I made my way to my desk, fell into my chair, and then started reading office email. It wasn’t terribly interesting. […]
Tweet On Tuesday I talked about my fantasy problem, and the project proposal that solved it. The core of that project proposal involved taking comic book conventions and transplanting them into traditional fantasy novels. I’ve been thinking about that old project a lot lately, and one day it occurred to me that I’ve got a […]
Tweet If you’ve been paying close attention, my dear inklings, you know that I’ve recently moved. What you might not know is that during the past week, I finally got all the books unpacked and shelved. OH HAPPY DAY. 😀 Well, I’ve shelved all the ones I’m keeping. In a masterful show of determination and […]
Tweet This week I’m talking about turning Kindle-published books into bestsellers. I’ve done it, and I’m sharing some secrets to how you can, too. Essentially, they boil down to this: Get really lucky, and watch in astonishment as your numbers start to climb. Of course, if I really felt that way, I wouldn’t be writing […]
Tweet This week’s WILAWriTWe is brought to you by my bookshelf that broke during the move. Some poor soul had leaned it up against the side of the truck, that it might be loaded thereonto — when lo! behold! a gust of wind blew the bookshelf over, smashing it into smithereens upon the pavement! Okay, […]
Tweet There’s a bug that’s been going around recently. As a matter of fact, there’s two. The first is a summer cold. An upper respiratory virus. Nothing terrifying or crippling, but just enough to take a man down for six to ten days. In this case, the grown man was me. That’s only a small […]
Tweet This week we’ve got guest posts from my good friend and fellow Consortium Writer, Joshua Unruh. He’s back today to talk about writing product descriptions, or back-cover copy for your books. Last time I gave you a bit of my career background to help explain why Aaron crowned me king of back-cover copy. (Kings […]
Tweet This week we’ve got a guest post from my good friend and fellow Consortium Writer, Joshua Unruh. I could tell you more about him, but he does a great job introducing himself below. Read on. Ladies and Gentlemen, please direct your attention to the CENTER RING! What’s up, party people? I’m Joshua Unruh, novelist […]
Tweet Yesterday’s post on the narrative difference between conflict and adversity ended with some specific advice: Avoid adversity by putting malicious cause behind your protagonist’s setbacks. The best way to do that is to make your antagonist responsible, but sometimes it can be a challenge to follow through on that. The trick is to manage […]
Tweet Way back when, I tried to start a series around here on some of the specialized storytelling terminology I’ve been learning in my Master of Professional Writing course. I got into Plates and Hooks and Scene Questions and Story Questions, and that diverted me off into a separate series on Story Questions. I’m not […]
