Category: Writing Tips


In Defense of Fanfic

Filed under: Personal, Writing Tips — 4 Comments
March 10, 2015

fanficLast week, when talking about how Agents of SHIELD seems to have been written like it was MCU fanfic rather than a true member of the franchise, I mentioned that fanfic isn’t a bad thing and can, in fact, be quite beneficial. It occurs to me that this probably deserves extra attention.

Yes, fan fiction can be beneficial. It’s a great way to encourage creativity, practice writing skills, and generally provide a sandbox for fans to play in.

It’s also a type of fiction that is notoriously riddled with bad writing. We’re not just talking about grammar and spelling. We’re talking about fiction that, quite often, shows little understanding of plot structure, character development, setup and payoff, or even why the source material it draws on is told the way it is.

fanfiction copy Continue reading →

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Building Your World: Cultural Weirdness

Filed under: Writing Tips — 4 Comments
March 9, 2015

Victory-Cigar-Congress-Passes-DST.jpegIt’s that time of year again. It’s time to wake up an hour early, only to look at the clock and be confused because it’s an hour later than it feels like it should be. It’s time to grumble and moan and ask yourself and anyone in earshot why do we do this ridiculous thing!?

That’s right. It’s Daylight Saving Time.

It’s a peculiar practice that supposedly saves energy, except it winds up causing far more headaches than benefits, makes scheduling things weird, and is generally a pointless exercise that may or may not save a few bucks.

This time, though, it made me think of a different topic. Strange peculiarities that may or may not make sense but always seem weird from a different perspective are what make a real-life culture seem, well, real. What kind of things can we learn from that for worldbuilding?  Continue reading →

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How to Fix the Oscars

Filed under: Industry, News and Updates — 3 Comments
February 25, 2015

academy-awards2I already laid out why I think the Academy Awards aren’t culturally-relevant. Lots of others have as well. What I noticed was missing, though, was how that could change.

Similarly, there’s a long-standing charge that the Hugo Awards (the equivalent of the Academy Awards for science fiction and fantasy, at least in terms of aspiration, and almost as old) are not representative of the genres the awards claim to cover. There’s a curious parallel, where we see that both sets of awards are chosen by a small minority compared to the total population of those who consume the relevant media.  Continue reading →

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An Old Fashioned Review

Filed under: Guest Posts, Reviews, Writing Tips — 4 Comments
February 17, 2015

Editor’s Note: One of my authors, Lori Janeski, had a lot to say about the film Old Fashioned, which premiered last week alongside 50 Shades of Grey. I invited her to turn our conversation into a guest review here on Novel Ninja, giving her analysis of why Old Fashioned failed not only as a romantic alternative to 50 Shades, but also why it just plain failed as a means of promoting “old fashioned romance.”

~ Matthew Bowman, Supreme Editor Monkey at Novel Ninja.

I’m not into rom-coms, I’ll admit that at the outset. If you were to ask me to choose between, say, It Happened One Night (Clark Gable and Claudette Colbert) and Twelve O’clock High (Gregory Peck and Hugh Marlowe), I’d pick the war movie, any day of the week and twice on Sunday.

So the fact that I voluntarily went to see Old Fashioned on Valentine’s Day by myself should tell you something. In fact, the main reason I bothered was to try to make sure that Fifty Shades of Smut didn’t make as much money at the box office on their opening weekend.

Knowing that, any review of mine must be taken with a significant grain of salt, because I am not a big fan of the genre in general (with a few exceptions, like Pride and Prejudice). With that in mind, this is what I thought. Continue reading →

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A Brief Look at Short Fiction

Filed under: Industry, Publishing, Writing Tips — Leave a comment
February 16, 2015

Short fiction — anything less than 40,000 words, at which point it’s officially a novel — is often overlooked. After all, even the definition of the novel seems small today, since a 40,000-word novel is, at maximum, 200 pages long. (And that’s if you use really long words.) When’s the last time you read a modern adult novel that was 200 pages or less?

Let’s take a look at some of the myths of short fiction, and why you should ignore them. Continue reading →

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Update on Tuscany Press

Filed under: Industry, News and Updates, Publishing — 2 Comments
February 13, 2015

A few things have happened since I posted my opinion on an essay published by Tuscany Press.

Tuscany has now added a hasty disclaimer to the end of Nico Gnoci’s essay, but you have to scroll all the way to the end to see it and they haven’t bothered to clean up the formatting mistakes. The editor-in-chief also told me in an email that it is opinion, and should not be confused with the stance of Tuscany Press.

They’ve also added a new essay giving a direct rebuttal. It’s by Declan Finn, and it’s a cleaned-up version of what he already posted. I recommend reading the original for full effect, though I admit the newer version’s title (“Set Catholic Sci-Fi Argument for Stun! – Captain Kirk Responds”) is 110% better than Declan’s original.  Continue reading →

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What’s in a Name?

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download (2)In Shakespeare’s most famous play (though not its most-quoted — that honor actually goes to Hamlet), Juliet takes a moment to philosophize on the subject of names.

O Romeo, Romeo! wherefore art thou Romeo?
Deny thy father and refuse thy name;
Or, if thou wilt not, be but sworn my love,
And I’ll no longer be a Capulet.
[…]
‘Tis but thy name that is my enemy;
Thou art thyself, though not a Montague.
What’s Montague? it is nor hand, nor foot,
Nor arm, nor face, nor any other part
Belonging to a man. O, be some other name!
What’s in a name? that which we call a rose
By any other name would smell as sweet;
So Romeo would, were he not Romeo call’d,
Retain that dear perfection which he owes

While a pretty bit of dialog and rather romantic in context, Juliet’s words are a poor example for authors to follow. Characters which change their names halfway through the story tend to be a bit confusing!

Names have been a recent subject of conversation, both in a discussion group I belong to as well as in a private conversation with a publisher as he reviewed a book I’d suggested as a possibility for publication. I thought I’d fire off a quick blog post on the topic.  Continue reading →

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Why I’m No Longer Recommending Tuscany Press to Authors

Filed under: Commentary, Industry, Publishing, Science Fiction — 17 Comments
February 12, 2015

EDIT: Since posting this yesterday, several people have privately told me of more issues with Tuscany Press. Some of it has been anecdotal, but others have been verifiable; and it all adds up to an unpleasant picture. The editor-in-chief at Tuscany has told me that the essay I fisked in the following post is opinion and should not be construed as Tuscany’s stance, but he did not address the issue that it was approved by Tuscany despite being obviously wrong. I may do an update on this issue soon.

ANOTHER EDIT: I’ve posted an update on this situation here.

Tuscany Press has been my go-to publishing house to recommend to fellow Catholic authors. I’m associated with Chesterton Press, a smaller indie Catholic Press (my Novel Ninja business is separate and not exclusive to Catholic fiction), but Tuscany is a larger operation and can handle more submissions at a time. However, I’m no longer recommending them, due to a recent post on their subsidiary, CatholicFiction.Net, on why science fiction is evil.  Continue reading →

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Escapism and the Need for Structure

Filed under: Editing, Writing Tips — 1 Comment
February 11, 2015

Some years back, I implemented a new system for submissions. I never look at unsolicited manuscripts anymore; I simply get too many, even though no one (okay, few people) would confuse me for a publisher. I had to put in some form of winnowing process. Many freelancers and small presses require a nominal fee, since even a simple five-dollar payment encourages people to make certain their manuscript is in good order before “wasting” their money.

I wanted a different process, one where no one had to send me money if I wasn’t going to definitely give them value in return. I also wanted to encourage writers to clean up certain common mistakes that I kept seeing over and over. (And over, and over . . .) They all had to do with structure.  Continue reading →

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SFWA Now Welcomes Indies; Do Indies Care?

Filed under: Industry, Publishing — Leave a comment
February 4, 2015

The Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America, the world’s most well-known union for SF&F professionals, has finally opened up membership to members of indie presses and self-publishing authors. As they acknowledge in their announcement, it’s a decision that took five years to make.

Yep. Five years. Five years in which the publishing world has changed more than in the previous fifty. The writing was on the wall as far back as ten years ago, so this heel-dragging on a membership model designed around 1970s publication standards (updated only to adjust for inflation and canonize or excommunicate certain outlets) has been particularly head-scratch-worthy.

And that’s not even including the fact that membership gives you . . . well, basically nothing.  Continue reading →

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