Writer
Last September I joined Scribophile, an online writing community that specializes in peer review and critique. So here it is, almost a year later, and I thought I’d do a little update to the Scribophile review I posted then. At the moment, I’ve got the first twelve scenes of my current project up on Scrib, with a total of 63 …
Jumping back in where we left off in Brainstorming, Pt 1, we’re in the middle of brainstorming a premise for our hypothetical fantasy novel. Spaghetti strand #3 is a good one, but just for fun we’re going to go back and check out the others. WOMEN IN POWER – Why would a feudal society be controlled by women? 1. Women …
Some people just don’t know how to brainstorm. Jeff is one of those people–brilliant in many other ways, but with no natural gift for brainstorming. Recently, I spoke with another writerly friend who struggles the same way. At first, I was rather shocked. What do you do when you can’t brainstorm? Do you just wait for a brilliant idea to …
This is a post about writing, I promise. Since I write fantasy, I know a lot about killing tension. Fantasy and other spec-fic writers have a ton of information and backstory to convey, and more often than not this results in the story coming to a screeching halt. Epic fantasy, in particular, tends toward long, drawn-out ‘saggy bits’ that can …
How to be a tortured artist if you actually have a pretty good life: write something you love, then give it to someone else and ask them to tear it to pieces. I’ve talked about writing groups and critique before, and you know that I think peer feedback can be really useful at certain stages of your writing, but it …
There are no hard and fast rules in writing. For a lot of folks, their first introduction to writing instruction comes in the form of entry-level writing courses in high school and college. These courses are tailored toward the lowest common denominator: usually, people who have little to no writing experience, and are not necessarily avid readers. They also mostly …
I posted earlier on the subject of Honesty vs Tact in critiquing. The problem with the Honesty vs Tact argument is that the two are not mutually exclusive. Tact is not dishonesty. Tact is the ability to communicate our ideas without giving offense. Naturally, we can only do so much to avoid giving offense–especially if we want to honestly express …
A topic recently came up on the Scribophile forums, posing the question: When critiquing someone else’s work, is it better to be honest or tactful? The overwhelming response seemed to be “Brutal honesty is the only way to learn”, but I had a big problem with the original premise. Honesty and tact are not on opposite sides of a spectrum, …
Here’s a quick (and very basic) refresher for anyone not solid on the difference between active and passive voice.
I’ve been a member of www.fantasy-writers.org for a long time, but recently I signed up for another writing site, Scribophile. The community of writers there is much larger, and not so tightly focused (all genres are represented there). So far I’ve been really enjoying it.