These are all the tips and advice about writing that I’ve collected over the years. They first started when I was outlining Stephen King’s On Writing and ballooned from there. They generally start simple, then expand to complex and detailed. Some of them are long. Some of them repeat. Some of them conflict. Some of …
I keep a list of writing tips for myself that I look at every once in a while. It started as an outline of Stephen King’s On Writing, but expanded from there as I learned more and more about the craft. Write what you know Well, if we only wrote what we know, there’d be …
One of the pieces of advice I often hear about writing is that you need to learn to follow the rules before you can break them. All writers do it. Choppy sentences, passive voice, fragmented sentences, consistent point of view, infodumping, starting with a character waking up, use of adverbs. Bestsellers and classics like Jane …
For those who like cross-promotion, I did a guest post on Daniel Ausema’s blog about the lessons I learned from Black Hole Son and how I applied them to Merm-8. Guess which one actually got published.
Libriomancer by Jim C. Hines Jim C. Hines is good at set dressing, but less so with character + plot combos. I wish I could come up with overall ideas like him, but that’s about all I wish for. The story, like his other stories, are very linear and take all place in the immediate …
Seven Seasons of Buffy: Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers Discuss Their Favorite Television Show edited by Glenn Yeffeth Like “The Girl Who Was on Fire: Your Favorite Authors on Suzanne Collins’s Hunger Games Trilogy” edited by Leah Wilson et al., a lot of the essays in this book start getting samey. The power of friendship, …
Room by Emma Donoghue Oh my god. This might be the best book I ever read. Certainly the best book I read this quarter, and maybe the best all year. From the moment I saw its description, I was too intrigued. Room takes place in just that: a room. The entire novel revolves around a …
I don’t think anyone knew this, but I was extremely nervous releasing “My Philosophy on Writing Women, Part 2 — The Debate”. For many weeks, I scrutinized each line, tried to be fair, but drew on my own experiences, exercised my critical thinking. Several times I almost erased the whole damn thing, thinking it would …
I subscribe to David Farland’s Daily Kick, which is not so daily or kicky. It’s basically a mailing list for writing tips blog. I can’t remember how I first heard of this — I’ve never read any of his books — but sometimes it has good articles, like how to sell to new markets and …
All right, it’s time to put out some more important writing advice. Over the years, I’ve made a series of tips (which I then promptly forgot about), critiqued various works of literature, cinema, & video games, created software to make better writing easier, and I frequently beta read at FanFiction.net and Critters. I’ve been published …