Garbage. Ultimate fail. Complete and utter sh*t. Harsh. If you’re a true writer, you’ve probably thought this or similar after reading your own work—especially a first draft. You feel embarrassed, ashamed, maybe even worthless....
*Rapid clicking* She pecked furiously at the keyboard, her pupils dilated from staring at the screen’s bright light for so long. She hadn’t talked to anyone all day–if you didn’t count her characters. They...
Bucket lists are the epitome of YOLO lifestyles. People put on it everything they want to do before they die–no matter how crazy. They’re usually all the things we fantasize about doing but can’t...
I remember when YouTube came out in 2005. I was in 8th grade and to us, it was like a supplement to MTV—you watched music videos. By the time I started teaching, I really...
Hello, there, again! If you’ve made it to part three of this series, I’m flattered that you’re probably liking my movie interpretations. You probably know already that I have a knack for reading movies...
When we think of “writers”, we tend to think of the short story and novel writers. We tend to ignore non-fiction writers and even completely disregard poets at times. It’s unfortunate because classic poets have...
THE YEAR WAS 2081, and everybody was finally equal. They weren’t only equal before God and the law. They were equal every which way. Nobody was smarter than anybody else. Nobody was better looking...
Working with Victoria M. Patton– a forensic chemist and author of the crime fiction Damien Kaine series–here are 10 things you may or may not know about crime and investigation that can take your fiction writing from amateur to expert.
How your character speaks is important to understand their background. Rather than info-dump, you can imply it with accent, speech patterns, idioms…
As writers, we have a tendency to change up how we refer to time as we progress through our work. It’s a pain to go back and change all that; but, you gotta do what you gotta do to ensure your writing is understood how you intend it to be. Tense can have a major effect on just that.
There are many novice writers who ask for advice in our communities, so I wanted to compile some advice from the published and unpublished writers of my Writers’ Coffeehouse.
A former student of mine, Zane Indie I call him, actually honed in his writing passion through a game. I finally wanted to find out what these “game stories” were all about, so I interviewed him about his journey during 2.5 years playing Dungeons and Dragons.
As creative writers, most of us want to share our stories and publish. I’m not gonna lie, I want to. Paradoxically, most of us are terrified to publish because of potential failure and rejection. Well, maybe you should start with a smaller audience and publish to a few magazines.
As I started to work on my character development, I had to keep in mind that dialogue is a key feature to understanding a character. How they speak can reveal much of their demographics–let alone the content of their conversation. If you didn’t know that, you know it now.
The fascination, confusion, curiosity, sadness, anger, disappointment, pride, devastation, happiness–all of it. Algernon yanked me by the hand and took me on every ride the emotional fair had to offer. That tells me, though, he’s an excellent catch.
