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Tag Archives: Unstressed Syllables

On Inspiration: Gookstuhgraw!

Tweet I’m quite lucky to be surrounded by the kind of creative talent I am, and quite conniving to get all that talent working on my behalf. That’s something I think (and am told) fairly often, but in this case it’s because of yesterday’s guest post. With no prompting whatsoever, Courtney wrote a perfect introduction […]

What I Learned About Writing This Week…from Disappointing Reads

I’m a quitter. I’ll admit it. I’ve decided that I don’t have time to finish books I’m not enjoying. Over the last month, I have picked up and almost immediately set down again two novels in particular…

On Scene Lists: Complications

Tweet As my sister so kindly pointed out, I’ve fallen a bit behind on the blog posts lately. And that’s after cutting my weekly commitment by half. I still mostly blame schoolwork, but that’s really just my temporary excuse. Give me a week, and I’ll be able to blame NaNoWriMo for a full month. After […]

On the Conflict Resolution Cycle: Designing a Narrative

Tweet Earlier this week I told a story. It was one I had to tell, under the circumstances. On the day I launched Gods Tomorrow to the public, you’d better bet I was going to talk about my novel. It works well as an illustration for the writing principles I want to talk about this […]

New Weekly Schedule

Tweet Well, as I said last Thursday, in light of my ridiculously busy fall schedule, I’ve been toying with the idea of dropping my weekly Technical Writing series here at Unstressed Syllables. At the same time, I said I thought I’d probably have last week’s series for you this week. I don’t. I received a […]

On Prewriting: A Schedule

Tweet This month I’ve been talking about NaNoWriMo, and how I bullied my dad and sister into writing their first novels, and my own glorious experience writing Gods Tomorrow a couple years back. There’s nothing quite like the thrill of writing a novel. Well…actually, that’s not true. There’s definitely another thrill that matches it: Holding […]

On Prewriting: The Story of GODS TOMORROW

Tweet You may or may not have missed it, but I didn’t post a Tech Writing series this week (Sunday-Tuesday). That wasn’t deliberate — and I apologize for ending last week’s series with a promise of information that didn’t get delivered. I’ll probably go ahead and post that series next week. That’ll probably be the […]

On Reading Like a Writer: Better than Expected

Tweet It’s time for another post about my dad. Before we dive in, let’s have a brief review: He’s an accomplished debater, and wins every fight with sheer Dadness He’s always been a natural storyteller He spent a long time wanting to write a book, and I spent a long time telling him he should […]

On NaNoWriMo: Writing a Book

Tweet Yesterday I told you how I bullied my dad and older sister into writing their first novels. I’m pretty sure both of them would jump at the chance to thank me for it. I can’t do that for you. I’m going to do my best to try — as Unstressed Syllables lumbers toward its […]

On Writing What You Know: How to Write What You Know

Tweet This week I stopped complaining about restrictive writing rules in favor of more generous advice. It’s really a continuation of the same theme, though. Write what you know. and Tell your readers what they need to know. The trick to both of those, really, is knowing what you know (and, of course, what you […]