Advice

Advice, Writing

Building Worlds One Word at a Time

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Good evening, everyone! Today, I’m going to write about one of my favorite things about writing: world building. I love well-built worlds in other’s work, and I love spending time building worlds in my own work. My favorite stories tend to be the ones that have fully realized worlds and settings. Dune, West World, the Harry Potter series. All of these stories have well-constructed worlds that are the foundations for the novel. Without them, the stories fall apart. World building is about as important, at least in my mind, as the plot of your novel. I’ll discuss how I work on building worlds and offer tips and tricks that I’ve found useful in my own writing.

Now, with my usually terrible transition skills, let’s get started with the meat of the post.

Advice, Book Promotion

Making it Pretty – Art Commissions

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Have you ever seen a piece of art, and just been blown away by it? It doesn’t matter if it’s a Monet (like the image above this post) or a piece of fanart on Tumblr, art has an ability to move us immediately. And while writing is an art in itself, sometimes a picture really is worth a thousand words. Or at least a couple hundred bucks. My post tonight is going to discuss commissioning art for your writing, how to go about finding artists, what’s a reasonable price and timeline, and what warning signs to look out for.

Advice, Writing

Just the Right Amount – Tension in Stories

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This is likely to be a short post, mainly because I need to get to bed somewhat early tonight so I can get up early in the morning to get some last minute editing and writing done, but an important one. I want to talk about creating tension in your story.

Tension is that strange bedfellow of conflict (a concept I’ve already discussed at length). Unlike conflict, though, tension can exist on every single page. With conflict, you need to be able to take a breather. Tension, however, drives your story and keeps your readers engaged. It doesn’t have to be in bright red, blaring letters, but tension lives and breathes in every word and scene in a good story. Whether it’s your character’s fears of not solving a mystery, or the pause before a battle where your characters are wondering if they’ll make it to the next day, or the long, drawn out moment when Dr. Frank N Furter lets us know he can see us shiver in antici…pation, tension is integral to keeping your audience engaged.

I’ll talk about some tried and true methods for creating tension in a story, as well as my personal thoughts on tension.

Advice

Community and Writing

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Just recently, I started meeting with two other writers in my area to exchange work, and edit and provide feedback. We’ve been meeting for a few months now, and I have to say it’s been extremely helpful. So today’s post is going to be about the value of community and finding people you can trust to give you constructive criticism.

Advice, Writing

Writing in the Cloud

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When I first started writing, I was limited to Microsoft Word or its freeware knock-offs. This meant that I was tied to a single computer, with a single file. I used to carry a notebook around with me, so I could write ideas down. In fact, some of my first fiction was written by hand, on the long bus ride to and from school. Now, with wifi and lightweight laptops, writing on the go is a lot easier. My main tool for writing these days is Google Docs, and that’s what this blog post is about. How to make effective use of writing in the cloud, the upsides of it, and the downsides.