Someone asked a question a while back about writing critiques and how to know which advice to follow. This person had joined a writing critique group, and they had received two different pieces of advice from two different people. This is an interesting question and I’m going to write a response that in this article….
Formulaic Storytelling Isn’t Always Bad: Rocky III Edition Let’s talk about fiction formulas. Back when I used to post on forums, I’d talk about my writing process. I write heavily to formulas and set ups, and I plan intensely before I write anything. Especially fiction, because the projects are long and it’s easy to mess…
New Fiction Niches A lot of writers fall into one of two paths to misery: They don’t act because they’re trying to find something “original” and all paths have seemingly been trod They feel they have to go into super-niche territory Now, there’s nothing wrong with the latter, providing it makes money. Too many writers…
Building A Fictional Character And Narrative With One Exercise I read a while back, and forgive me but I don’t remember the source, that for something to be considered true in fiction, you must repeat it three times. I sort of agree with that, but there’s more to it. The cat is pink. There’s a…
What Is The Best Fiction Writing Exercise? A reader sent me an email a few weeks back asking what the best exercise for writing fiction was. “What if you could only recommend one writing exercise? (I’m guessing copying by hand, but maybe you found something more worthwhile).” It’s a good question, and I’ll preface the…
Beginner Writer Motivation Issues A lot of people think that writing blocks and lack of writing progress is a motivation issue. It’s not. It’s a lack of sitting down and writing that’s the issue. In this article, I will address once and for all the issue of writer motivation. I’ll give you the tools to…
How to Plan A Novel It’s November 1st 2017, and among other things, that means plenty of people are planning to write a novel this month. Unfortunately, the vast majority of them are going to get stuck either planning a novel or planning and writing a novel to the first chapter, but no more. If…
How To Fail At NANOWRIMO National Novel Writing Month is November of each year. It’s shortened to the terrible acronym-thing, NaNoWriMo. Every year, writers from around the world line up to write a 50,000 word novel. That’s a grand total of about 1700 words a day, give or take some. I did it for the…
I have written short stories for years, as well as non-fiction books. I have planned novels out for years too. However, like many writers, I have a lot of unfinished manuscripts dating back a long time. I have books that are 200000 words long. I haven’t finished them, and they sit waiting for my…
One Simple Way To Cure Writer’s Block Forever I used to suffer from writer’s block. I also used to believe in the strange idea that a writer should put out one book a year, like most of my favourite authors do. I also believed that Stephen King was an outlier in that he could publish…