I often write when I’m tired. Does that sound weird? Sometimes, I do it quite on purpose. Not because I’m trying to push through the fatigue or anything so banal, but because writing lifts me out of it. I’ve dozed…
Leave a CommentCategory: Writing, editing, style, grammar
From many decades of creative and commercial writing experience, find posts on writing, editing, style, grammar and related topics of interest to writers. Anyone’s free to give the category a read, of course, but most of this is straight-up “if you don’t write, it probably isn’t going to interest you much” stuff. Just sayin’.
Story pacing – keeping your readers hooked, line by line Story pacing is another tool in our writing toolbox. When we talk about story pacing, we’re not referring to how fast a story takes place or the calendar time over…
Leave a Comment
Medieval Weapons – hand cannons and things you can’t pronounce Medieval weapons were plentiful and go beyond your garden variety knightly sword. I do profess an undying love for them all. Over time, I’ve accumulated quite a lot of reference…
Leave a Comment
The art of spelling – don’t let autocorrect steal your magic The art of spelling is a dying one, it seems. In this age of smartphones and, okay, smart everything, they all come with a default autocorrect or automated dictionary…
Leave a Comment
Story Element Tropes in Fantasy Writing Knowing what we know now, let’s have a look at some fantasy story element tropes and talk out ways to avoid the clichéd version. The bulk of advice about fantasy tropes tells us to…
Leave a Comment
Plot Tropes in Fantasy Writing This time, let’s get into ways around a clichéd version of a few fantasy plot tropes, so you can take that perspective into any others to help improve your story telling. Again, the bulk of advice…
Leave a Comment
World-Building Tropes in Fantasy Writing Now let’s focus on ways to not regurgitate clichéd version of fantasy world-building tropes to make your story unique. Typical advice around fantasy tropes is to avoid them. However, knowing that all those tropes shaped…
Leave a Comment
Character Tropes in Fantasy Writing Let’s think about the ways we might steer clear of rehashing clichéd versions of fantasy character tropes to make your story more interesting and, hopefully, memorable. The usual advice about fantasy tropes is to avoid…
Leave a Comment
Fantasy tropes – love them, hate them, make them your bitch Fantasy tropes get a bad rap. Everybody’s used them. None of them are new. And you want to be original, dammit! Popular advice about fantasy tropes Most advice about…
Leave a Comment
What’s a Dialogue Tag? Dialogue tags are narrator interjections, sometimes referred to as attribution, that note who speak the pieces of dialogue in your story. Historically, we were taught that adverbs included in the tags, describing how dialogue is delivered,…
Leave a Comment