This week marks the release of a novel by new author Shean Pao called The Feather and the Moon Well. Her novel is being released by Kevin J. Anderson’s Wordfire Press, and is being released as the first title in the “David Farland Discovery” program. So what is a “David
An editor can be your best friend or your worst enemy. In truth, I don’t think that you want him or her to be either. Here is what I mean by that. I once had a line editor who loved my work so much, he wanted to edit every book
I’ll be at Salt Lake Comic Con FanX in a few days. If you are going to be there, you should stop by my booth or panels. Here is my panel schedule: Thursday, March 24th 4-5 p.m. The Newt Harry Potter 6-7 p.m. Writing Fantasy: An Inside Look at the
Last night, a new writer who is preparing his first novel asked, “When do I begin approaching agents?” I get that question at least once a week, and my answer is always the same: “When your novel is done. And by that I mean, well done!” I think that it
“I’d heard enough tales of the publishing industry to decide that I didn’t want to put in the effort of writing a book only to have it spend a decade or two being rejected. . . . Less than two months after being published, Torchship had earned enough to qualify
Have you ever read a story that starts with a character sitting in a still forest, just thinking? They’re almost always dull. I’ve read, and rejected, thousands of them for publication. Why? Because the whole darned story is just sitting there, doing nothing, too. So we’re trained as writers to
I’m doing something a little different today for my writing tip. This article, 7 Ways to Be More Creative, caught my attention this week, and I thought it was a pretty good read. So, for today’s tip, I’m going to send you to it to read: 7 Ways to Be
Lately I’ve had several people ask for tips on how to write antiheroes. So my first question is, “How ‘bad’ is your antihero?” An antihero is a character without traditional heroic qualities, but they may have heroic qualities in their own right. He or she is the kind of person
In my book Million Dollar Outlines I discuss some of the markers that can help me discover if a book is a potential hit. I look at whether it was written to a wide audience or a narrow one, whether it transports the reader to another world, and how well
If you really want to write wretched dialog, you should consider working on your dialog tags. Here are a few options that you might not have considered. I love a story that starts out with tags like this: Elena: “Did you buy the soup?” Jacob: “What soup?” Elena: “The split
Recently I read a couple of stories where it felt as if the author was struggling to come up with bad dialog. So I thought I should give a few tips on how to do it properly. The easiest way to write wretched dialog is to use dialog for the
A couple of years ago, I read an article about hounds hunting for rabbits. Researchers had found that when a hound is hunting for a rabbit, each time that the hound caught a rabbit’s scent, the dog’s brain released dopamine as a reward, to keep him hunting. It wasn’t until
I see a lot of trends in today’s literature. Perhaps the biggest one is that every writer seems to be in a rush. Many new writers try to keep the pacing blazing hot. They’ve heard that in today’s world, kids are trained to think in “sound bites,” and anything longer
For some authors, it is enough to try to make big bucks, but most of us would like to deliver a powerful message at times, too—something that carries extra meaning in our lives, something profound. Doctors studying the neuro-science of storytelling go so far as to suggest that a story
Humans are creatures of habit. We learn how to do a thing—such as drive a car—and then put ourselves on autopilot. We don’t have to consciously think about “How do I start this thing? How do I use a turn signal? Am I giving it enough gas?” We just hop
Wait, before you go…
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