Straight talk from the sisters about blood, sweat and ink
Our brains are remarkable machines capable of sorting and storing information we don’t even realize is in there. It’s being able to recall this data that trips most of us up. We can all think of a time we felt a fierce emotion. We know the feeling is perfect for our current writing project. We …
Continue reading “Be a Better Writer: Use Brain Triggers”
National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) takes place every November. As most of you know, the goal is to compose a first draft of your novel, roughly 50,000 words during the 30 days. It works out to be a doable 1,667 words a day, but only if you sit down and write that chunk every day. …
Continue reading “Lessons From The NaNoWriMo Trenches”
I’ve always felt the call of the wild, that deep magnetic draw to be outside. The feeling stuck with me even after bad times, days when Mother Nature let me know she held all the cards. Like when I lost my footing while backpacking and tumbled down an embankment, or when a Tarantula Hawk sting …
Continue reading “The Call of the Wild and How Writers Respond.”
For urban dwellers, nature sits apart. Most of us only see the spare, diminished nature of city parks and backyard gardens. Even these natural settings we relegate to the rear of our consciousness as we focus on the conditions around us, the cars in the street, our work cubical, a much-needed trip to the grocery …
Continue reading “Into the Wild: Creating Nature Settings”
I happen to love architecture, I always have. I’m one of those strange people who measures time by my landmark acquisitions. However, I believe anyone can learn to write about structures (from castles, to space stations, to huts) by asking themselves a few simple questions about how they want to use the building in the …
Continue reading “Navigating Architectural Spaces in your Fiction: From Apse to Ziggurat:”
The principles of choosing and researching a real world location for your fictional setting follows the same rules regardless of the genre. So contemporary writers listen up, someone out there knows more about the downtrodden civic center you’ve picked as the setting for your new novel than you do. So if you don’t want the …
Continue reading “Misty Moors and Bloody Battlements: The Rules of Setting”
What’s in a name? Shakespeare asked the question and we as fiction writers know the answer, the name is everything! Well maybe not everything, but critical, as names set the tone and define how readers view characters. Do we expect P. G. Wodehouse’s character Bertie Wooster to be an esteemed mathematician? Most assuredly, not. As …
Continue reading “Creating Names for Historical Fiction”
The ability to mass produce books gave birth to the popular novel, the Bronte Sisters, George Sand and perhaps one of the best-loved novelists of all time, Jane Austen. Since Austen’s first book was released over two centuries ago, people have studied her work. We love her books because they’re packed with social humor and …
Continue reading “You are mistaken, Mr. Darcy: How to use literature to build your fiction vocabulary”