Tweet I’m a huge fan of GMail. Have I ever mentioned that before? I know I’ve talked about Google Docs, and you can probably take it for granted that anyone who raves about Google Docs appreciates the company’s email service, too. Still. I’m a huge fan of GMail. I never delete anything. Everything goes in […]
Tweet So. Thanks to Josh and a rollicking romp of insanity, I somehow got myself involved with the Kindle All-Stars Project. In short, KAS is the brainchild of one Bernard J. Schaffer, who is putting together a short story anthology for Kindle of various independent authors. The proceeds of the anthology will go to the […]
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 It was a couple weeks ago when I talked about the importance of designing good story questions. Since then I’ve talked about the diverse properties of bones, and some rules for using story questions to build a structurally sound novel. Leaving out the cute story about my kid, most of the discussion has been […]
Characters are like the paint samples of the world. Some of them are vivid. Some are pale. A select few are restful and pleasant to the reader’s eye the moment they step onto the page. Yet others look icky, no matter what light we cast them in. But they all need molding and clarifying, and that’s where the hard work starts…
Having no idea whatsoever how long it might take to rewrite Legend’s Heir (working title), and needing a writing project other than blogging (so that I wouldn’t go crazy), I sat down this past weekend and started rewriting what I am now referring to as The Monster Epic Fantasy Novel (MEFaN) — thereby proving that I have gone crazy.
We’re talking prologues, my dear inklings. Should we have them? Or should we cast them upon the cleansing fires of editing and rewrites, never allowing them to mar another of our manuscripts again?
Tweet Yesterday I laid out my plan for a collaborative writing project based on some prewriting packages. Today, I’d like to talk about those packages. The Civilization Book This one actually started as a suggestion from Toby. It’s not a new idea, but it’s a fun idea, and it could give rise to something very […]
Tweet I started the week with the story of my lonely, zombie Christmas. Some of you might have guessed where the series was going based on comments I’ve made before — that writing is a really lonely profession. More of you might have figured it out by looking at the series title, “On Collaborative Writing.” […]
Tweet Yesterday I talked to you about your book’s big, bad rewrite. I gave you one example of how it might go, and then started into a bit of a pep talk. Now it’s time for me to tell you about application, to tell you how to do your rewrite. That’s a tricky task. I […]
