About stories of all kinds
Carved into wood, lettering whimsical and loopy, pine trees accenting the bottom, the piece reads: Even the smallest person can change the course of the future. J.R.R. Tolkien Never have I been so annoyed by a sign that I like in all my life. Aesthetically: beautiful. Quotationally: love quotes. Authorially: big fan of Tolkien. The… Continue reading Cite Your Sources: Because Some Who Wander ARE Lost
The wrong words. They were true a hundred times over, yet they sounded like a lie. Hadn’t he always known it? Words were useless. At times they might sound wonderful, but they let you down the moment you really needed them. You could never find the right words, never, and where would you look for… Continue reading The Wrong Words
Well, last night was the last night to update word counts and scramble in the last couple thou. I actually forgot about it—I was reorganising my bookshelf at the time. Was it in dire need of reorganising? No. But nor has it been any of the other five times I’ve completely reorganised it this pandemic,… Continue reading NaNoWriMo: How it went… and is still going.
In October, I seriously considered doing NaNoWriMo for the first time this year. Given the state of things and my nigh-jobless condition, it made sense. But I didn’t really know how it worked—I would have to look into it, prepare for it. I didn’t. Then it was already November, and while not too late to… Continue reading I think I just made a terrible mistake
Writers are often encouraged to start their novels off with a bang. Hook them in the first paragraph, the first sentence—heck, the first word. Sometimes, it takes on the form of marketing strategy. “Look at television commercials,” they say. “The scene is set, a problem arises, and the product appears as the answer to the… Continue reading Storm Warning: Writing the Inciting Incident
I have a problem that’s been going on for quite sometime. I’ve sort of noticed it off and on in the background, but always dismissed it as something I don’t really need to take steps to fix. Until now. It came to a head when I went back to a WIP and started thinking about… Continue reading Secondary Characters: The Curse of the Dark Horse
When I first started writing stories, I probably had a setting, a few characters, and an inciting incident. Nothing more. I did not know the meaning of the word “plot,” as noun or verb. I embodied the method of "pants-ing" and, consequently, didn’t finish a single story until I was in my early teens. It's… Continue reading The Plot Thickens: A Writer’s Guide to Looking Like You Knew What You Were Doing All Along
Ah, time travel: creator of paradoxes, destroyer of timelines, and conveniencer of plots. I like a good time travel story, whether it be the new Who (Moffat loops and all) or the good old Back to the Future. Time travel tends to frequent science fiction, but is also exploited for its potential in the historical… Continue reading Time in Flux (Capacitor): Ruby Red and The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August
In any work of writing, even this blog, whether we are conscious of it or not, there is a voice that comes through. It's what you hear in your head while you're reading. It's how it makes you feel--is it whimsical? Informative? Tense? Know-it-all? It's up to how you interpret what you're reading on the… Continue reading Writing in Style: Authorial Voice
A couple summers ago, I got the chance to share some books I love with my older brother and sister. When I asked each of them separately how they’d liked their individual selection, I got opposite (and therefore mirrored) responses: from my brother, “You can sure tell it’s written by a woman,” and from my… Continue reading “You Can Just Tell…”
Fictitiously Yours 