Category: Writing Tips


AwesomeCon, Day One

Filed under: Conventions, Industry, Just For Fun, Personal — 2 Comments
April 18, 2014

As I noted before, AwesomeCon is much bigger this year. I forgot my camera and didn’t want to just use my phone, so I’ll take pictures tomorrow; but I found myself looking around the dealer hall in disbelief. That room alone would convince anyone who didn’t know better that this was an established con, and not something in its second year. The staff and other volunteers were doing a top-notch job, and the convention center staff were extremely helpful to everyone.

Also, I was amused to hear one of the screens playing “Everything is Awesome” (from The LEGO Movie) on continuous loop in the library. Despite its ultimate meaning in the movie, I was still appreciative! Continue reading →

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Fooling the Audience

Filed under: Resources, Writing Tips — 6 Comments
April 1, 2014

Normally I ignore April Fools’ Day, but it occurred to me that it would be thematically appropriate to talk about a valuable writing skill: hiding things from your audience.

“Wait, what? Hiding things? That doesn’t sound like a good idea! The whole point of writing is to tell them things!”

Exactly! But you don’t just tell them the end first, do you? You build up to it, with clues that set up the twists, but then hide those clues so that it’s still a surprise to all but the most eagle-eyed.

I feel I should issue a warning, though. Learning these concepts can lead some people to feel that all stories are ruined forever. If you’re just here for the reviews, don’t read any further. Personally, I find it enjoyable to spot the tricks, especially with a skilled author; it doesn’t ruin it any more than knowing how to spot individual brush strokes will ruin a masterful painting. Still, I’ve seen people become disappointed, and so I give you fair notice.  Continue reading →

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Don’t Dump

Filed under: Resources, Writing Tips — 6 Comments
March 26, 2014

One of the most common mistakes, even with professional storytellers, is to deliver a lot of exposition in a small space, or otherwise give “idiot lectures” where you have one character being a bit more dumb than usual simply so that a second character will have to explain something to him (and therefore to the audience). This is often called infodumping, and it’s often hard to avoid — but the best authors watch out for it and work around it.

Continue reading →

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Book Prices

Filed under: Industry, Publishing — Leave a comment
March 24, 2014

World-famous, multiple-time New York Times bestselling author Larry Correia recently posted a rant. This is nothing new; he rants a lot, though the difference between him and your average Internet Joe is that his rants are educational snark and not simply complaints. (Well, other than stuff like complaining about government bureaucracy, but hey, if my wife were treated that way, I’d be ticked off too.)

This particular rant was about something I talk about a lot too: the pricing of books. You can click here to read what Correia wrote (language warning), but the gist of it was that someone posted a review of one of his novellas without reading it, simply so he could complain about the price. It seems that a 30,000-word novella written by a very big-name author in a moderately big-name IP (Warmachine), with full-color illustrations and accessible to people who know nothing about said IP, is not worth the huge, huge cost of . . . five bucks.

Similarly, there’s a member of a Facebook writing support group I’m in who has said multiple times that he won’t bother reading any ebook priced higher than $3.99, because “That’s how much mine is and I doubt anyone worked any harder than me.”

Continue reading →

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Rising Book Sales Lift All Authors (Or: “Shut Up and Write!”)

Filed under: Industry, News and Updates, Publishing, Resources, Writing Tips — 6 Comments
February 25, 2014

You may or may not have heard the latest faux controversy about J. K. Rowling. No, it has nothing to do with her characters. Instead, it’s a Huffington Post writer named Lynn Shepherd complaining that Rowling is such a good author that she’s crowding out everyone else. She tells Rowling that she should just stop writing and give other people a chance. If you don’t want to click on her article, here’s the summary: Rowling has too much of a market share, which means every book she publishes is a book overlooked from another author who hasn’t become famous yet.

There has been a lot of pushback so far. I won’t post more than one link, mainly because the BBC’s article has more than enough links from successful authors who say this is ridiculous. I wasn’t even going to do more than link to that article, because every single point has been refuted multiple times by the authors linked there, and that’s just a small sample so far. What could I add? Continue reading →

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Stories with Messages

Filed under: Industry, Writing Tips — 2 Comments
January 30, 2014

Currently, the SF&F blogs are embroiled in a mild (well, for some of them, very much not mild) tizzy over whether or not stories should be written with a particular cause in mind. I’m not going to mention what the specific argument is, because 1) if you don’t already know, you probably don’t want to be involved in the first place; and 2) it really doesn’t matter, because I want to talk about cause-fiction in general.  Continue reading →

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History and Stories

Filed under: Resources, Writing Tips — Leave a comment
December 30, 2013

I can go on and on about stories until my voice goes raw or my hands cramp up, depending on how I’m talking to you. Because of that, it often surprises many people that I don’t have a single degree in literature. For now, my highest degree is actually in history.

Why is that? Well, I maintain that a history degree — assuming that you’ve had a wide-ranging focus and look at many different cultures — is one of the best fields to truly teach you how to write. That’s because most lit degrees teach you about other books, but they don’t tend to teach you about people. Make no mistake, both history and stories are fundamentally about people. Continue reading →

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Agents and Heroines

Filed under: Reviews, Writing Tips — 1 Comment
December 2, 2013

It’s been a while since my last Agents of SHIELD review, which could be interpreted as a lack of enthusiasm. This is true, to an extent. I haven’t been wowed. I’ve been entertained enough to give it a viewing when I need a break, but not so entertained that I feel like talking about it afterwards. I did catch up this Thanksgiving, though, so I figured I’d write a review. Spoilers ahead if you care about that, mainly for the episode “The Well.”  Continue reading →

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Submission Stress

Filed under: Editing, Industry, Publishing, Writing Tips — 1 Comment

One of my authors just submitted a book. Well, I say she’s one of mine, but so far we haven’t engaged in actual financial business. She’s an old friend that I give advice to and help craft things. I haven’t had time to go over her book, but I’ve seen her writing and I hand-picked her for an upcoming series I’m managing next year (so she will be one of my authors, officially, in about six months). I’ve also helped her craft her cover letter, pitch, and so on.

She just bit the bullet on a submission she’s been putting off for literally years now. Now she has to wait for up to a year to get a response. It can be an intimidating thing. In fact, it can be a stressful thing — for good reason, though not a “good enough” reason. Continue reading →

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When to Use Dialog Tags?

Filed under: Editing, Writing Tips — Leave a comment
November 8, 2013

Dialog tags are sometimes tricky to use. When to use them? Why? Where? How much?

I’m not going to assume you don’t know what dialog tags are. I’m not even going to go into grammar and whether you should ever use “said” versus something else. I’m just going to give you four rules of thumb that I give my authors.  Continue reading →

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