Author: harmamae
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The Missing Ingredient in Too Many Romance Novels
The Over-stated Role of Attraction There are a couple typical plots for romance novels, but most of them go something like this: Girl is frustrated at being single/sick of dating jerks/doesn’t have time for romance. Girl and Guy meet cute. Girl and Guy hate each other for some contrived reason (usually one of them…
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An Opening to Intrigue You
In the land of Ingary, where such things as seven-league boots and cloaks of invisibility really exist, it is quite a misfortune to be born the eldest of three. – Howl’s Moving Castle (yes, again) I love this opening because it establishes so clearly that this novel is going to poke fun at fairy-tales. The…
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Talking Down to Readers
That Pedantic Tone of Writing You know the style of writing – “Now let me tell you a story…” or “As you shall see in the end…” The style of writing where a strong narrator’s voice almost intrudes into the story, reminding the reader that it is a story. Often this is thought of as…
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That’s Not Shakespeare! Or Maybe It Is
“Alas, poor Yorick!” – Howl, from Howl’s Moving Castle, quoting Shakespeare When I first read Howl’s Moving Castle, I didn’t realize this was a quote from Shakespeare until I read Hamlet a year later. Funny how we tend to attribute things to the last person that we remember said them, whether or not they actually…
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Concerning Hobbits
In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit. – The Hobbit That has to be the most famous line ever scrawled on the back of a student’s exam paper. It’s such a good example of an intriguing opening line for a novel – I remember wondering just what a hobbit was, and why…
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Why Blog?
Advice for New/Old Bloggers Apparently the number of blogs on the net is approaching infinity – if you count everyone’s Myspace and Facebook notes and so on. Still, if that is true, why on earth am I writing another one? Or if it was your New Year’s Resolution to start one yourself, why should you…
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Poor Starving Writers – A Thought from Robert Bloch
So I had this problem – work or starve. So I thought I’d combine the two and decided to become a writer. – Robert Bloch I’ve never read any of Robert Bloch’s work (apparently he wrote Psycho), but this quote sums up why I’ve never really dared to commit to writing for a living. I…
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Breaking the 10 Simple Rules for Writing a Novel
There are three rules for writing a novel. Unfortunately, no one knows what they are. — W. Somerset Maugham Well, while surfing the net I stumbled across a lovely article advising people on how to write a novel in 2012 – you know, if that’s your New Year’s Resolution or something. And some of the…
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Top Ten of 2011: Ugly People, E-Publishing, and Limericks
OR, Why People Read Stories and Stuff It’s Quotable Wednesday today, and since it’s coming up on a year since I started blogging regularly, what better way to celebrate than to quote myself? So here is a list of the Top Ten Most Viewed posts of 2011, brought to you by Stories and Stuff. First…
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Not My New Year’s Resolutions
I’ve never believed in the whole goal-setting thing as much as I should believe in it. (I’ve been told I must set goals or fail at life since elementary school, and when people phrase things like that I have trouble believing them). It doesn’t help when goals you have set – eg: finishing nursing…
Hmm... 