Archive for the ‘The Craft of Writing’ Category

When Words Melt Away

by Hunter Liguore

Writing classes and books are filled with tips on creating characters and developing plot, but very few ever offer the golden jewel that oversees all the other components meshing together to arrive at a story or novel: coherence. In fact, when an author discovers coherence for the first time, they will experience a place where words melt away, and the only thing that remains is a deep knowing and trust in how the story will take shape.

The Reality of Writing in Uncertain Times

by Kali Wallace

By now everybody who spends any time on the internet has seen the quarantine memes. Isaac Newton invented calculus during a plague outbreak–what are you doing with your time? Mary Shelley wrote Frankenstein when stuck inside during bad weather–why haven’t you invented a literary genre yet? Look at how Giovanni Boccaccio used his pandemic–have you been as productive?

Persistence

by Bud Sparhawk

After being in the writing game for nearly thirty years and selling my output on a fairly steady basis I still find myself puzzled whenever another blank page stares at me. Ideas abound, but only a few may hold the power to become complete stories.

Making It Different – Pushing Genre Boundaries in Fantasy

by Martin Jenkins

One of the pleasures of genre is that it lets us identify a type of writing that we know we like. We’d feel short-changed if a crime novel didn’t feature a crime, after all, or if a romance didn’t put the travails of a relationship front and center. What we don’t want to see, however, is a mere repetition of genre tropes and clichés – it’s what is fresh and different in a work of fiction that keeps us turning the page while still being identifiably a genre work.

A Worldbuilding Guide to Crafting Diverse Cultures

by Amelia Wiens

One of the best parts of science fiction and fantasy is the worldbuilding. A key part of creating interesting worlds is creating diverse cultures that vary in some way from our own norms. That being said, it can be so hard to get out of our own culture’s point of view and redefine elements that we unconsciously take for granted.

Writing Down Fear

by Hunter Liguore

What do you fear when you sit down to write? Fear can be the debilitating emotion that prevents us from getting into the chair in the first place. It’s the force that makes lengthy excuses for why we can’t write. Next to procrastination, fear can cause us to abandon projects, call it quits, or worse, abandon the writing completely.