You and Your Career
I’ve been watching other writers now for nearly fifty years, thanks in part to a neighbor I had as a kid. I was born and raised in Oregon, and in the late 60s, the Hippie Generation was on the move. I lived in a small farming community, and suddenly we had “flower children” moving into […]
How to Bore an Editor to Death
While judging for the Writers of the Future with my handy laptop, and reading hundreds of stories, I decided to list some ways that otherwise good writers try to bore an editor to death. Boring Opening #1: The Tedious Details Try scanning the first two pages of your story and see if you see this […]
Temporal Motion
People are attracted to motion, particularly physical motion. But when describing a setting, some things are pretty resistant to moving. Houses, mountains, trees, and so on remain static. You can work around that problem. You can put things in motion around a house, for example, or you can describe the motionless object using metaphors or […]
Seeing Yourself as a Writer
A lot of people have a hard time imagining themselves as full-time writers—and that is often the only thing that holds them back. You might be a lawyer, a dentist, a coal miner, or a waitress, and you define yourself as that. Yeah, you love writing, but you don’t think you’re free to write. You […]
Customer Acquisition 101
As a novelist, if you’re successful enough, you’ll someday discover that you’re not just a lady who types manuscripts in a coffee shop or a loner who composes novels in his underwear in his basement—you’re something more. You’re a major corporation. You create stories that you export on a global basis and sell in various […]
How to Become an International Bestselling Author: The 4 Secrets
I realized that new authors need to study four major topics to becoming a bestseller:
1. The Fine Art of Storytelling
2. Writing with Style
3. Staying Inspired
4. The Business of Writing
5 Ways to Improve Worldbuilding in Speculative Fiction
Written by: Angela Brown When you build a new world, you’re responsible for building the very essence of any good story. In the genre of speculative fiction, which can include science fiction, fantasy, and magical realism, it may be tempting to go overboard with your writing. Doesn’t creating a new reality mean that you get […]
Writing for Fun and Profit
—Every writer is a small businessperson, one that markets its product in dozens of countries around the globe and in various mediums. To be a successful writer, you need to learn how to run your business.
One Impossibility
If you write a novel set in the real world—whether it is historical or modern—you don’t have to worry so much about “creating” as “researching” your setting. But if you are writing science fiction or fantasy, you very often “create” a world from scratch. There are a couple of approaches that you can take to this.
What’s a “Working Outline”?
When you send a novel proposal to a publisher or a movie proposal to a studio, you’ll often be asked to send an “outline” with your package. The word outline is used rather casually, and it often can be misleading. Many publishers and producers really want a “synopsis,” a brief description of what happens in […]