Category: On Writing
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The Trouble With Modern Romance
The trouble with modern romance novels is that our culture sees no reason for two people who are in love not to be together. This significantly cuts down on the potential for conflict in the novel. In comparison, Jane Austen had it easy. I’m going to use Jane Austen as an example for a second,…
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Getting It Right the First Time
To Revise Or Not To Revise, That Is The Question… Recently, I’ve been hearing a barrage of arguments from two different points of view – those who believe a good writer will efficiently produce a clean draft on the first go, and those who believe in multitudes of revisions. They both make good points, but…
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A Meaningful Universe?–Defining Fantasy
Fantasy, according to Crawford Kilian, takes place in a morally meaningful universe, and that is why readers like it so much. “In fantasy, meaning is not something we slap on from the outside, it’s built right into everything from the rocks and trees to the political system.” I do love fantasy, possibly because I believe…
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Things I’ve Learned From Blogging – 6 Months In
Update: If you want to know what I think about blogging 13 years later in 2024, you can read that here. Now that it’s July, I’ve been blogging for six solid months. Time to evaluate if I’ve learned anything. Fiction has always been my writing interest – though I have had a few non-fiction articles…
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Prolific Vs. Perfectionist – What is the Best Way to a Lasting Writing Career?
Is it better to churn out hundreds of books that are mediocre, or just a couple that are really, really good? A few weeks ago, I mentioned how it is a general rule that writers need to publish around three novels before they establish their name in the industry. This means, of course, that a…
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Travel? Research? – Getting Your Setting Right
OR: Write What You Know, Or Risk What You Don’t Know I always wonder if writers have visited or lived in the places they write about, and if they haven’t, how they feel comfortable enough writing about places they’ve never been. I’m always incredibly afraid of messing the place up and getting some hypercritical reader…
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It’s the Readers’ Fault! Why Bad Writing is Called Good
OR: Don’t Blame Them, They Didn’t Notice the Difference Anyway Authors agonize over metaphors. They might spend ages debating word choice. They careful revise their sentence structure. What would you say if someone told you readers rarely notice this kind of thing anyway? I’m a poor student, and like many a poor student I participate…
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Update on the Splayed Novel
As you can see from the picture, my organizational system for keeping track of the plot of my novel is getting unwieldy. (For comparison, see the picture in this post). On the plus side, I am one tenth of the way through! The trick now is to not bog down in the middle part, but…
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Does Writer’s Block Exist?
Lately, I’ve been coming across numerous writers who insist writer’s block doesn’t exist – it’s just an excuse for writers not to write. I can kind of see that point of view. On the other hand, I’m pretty sure writer’s block exists, because I suffered from it for five years. “Writer’s block is a fabrication,”…
Hmm... 