In my continual quest to improve my writing craft, I watched the recorded Brandon Sanderson’ course on Creative Writing. I seriously recommend it to anyone writing novels, especially SciFi / Fantasy. Below are my thoughts about how to make the best use of it.
Writing
Action Choreography for Novels
This post arose out of my review of Six of Crows. I complained that many action sequences were problematic. I didn’t provide examples, to avoid spoilers and in fairness to Bardugo, but I think this subject deserves a full post. There were a few scenes in the novel, more than a passing oversight, where the […]
Plotting? Pantsing? Plotsing!
In the eternal quest to improve my writer’s craft, I do three things. These are, for me, the three pillars that make the best, most stable structure for growth. They are: Writing often (novels and short stories – there’s always something going on in my head) Reading voraciously (in and out of my particular genre mix […]
Kurt Vonnegut’s Eight Rules for Writing
I recently came across Kurt Vonnegut’s eight rules for writing a short story. I thought they are pretty brilliant, regardless of the scope of you story (they could apply to a full-length novel just as much), so I have reproduced them below together with my thoughts about them. 1. Use the time of a total […]
How Do You Get Paid?
I have the bestest fans. A dear soul has sent me an invaluable resource of Roman Republican coinage. Not actual coins, duh, but an online collection of images of Mid-to-Late Republic coins – Rutgers University Badian Collection. The collection covers roughly 280 to 31 BCE, and is comprised of about 1,200 coins. Each entry is detailed […]
Bits and Snippets of Writing
Not all ideas end up as a full novel. Sometime’s it’s just a flash fiction, or even a mere snippet of a story. Here are a couple of particularly delicious ones from the past few weeks. All were done as a prompt (where someone asked for it or not…) to an image. This little techno-beasty […]
State of the publishing industry
Rather than an article, I include below links to two others, with my thoughts on them. I think they show pretty well the current turmoil that the publishing industry is in. The first is titled “Cover Story: The Quiet Catastrophe, Then Reinvention Of Book Publishing”, by John Birmingham on which-50. Here’s a notable excerpt: The last […]
National Maritime Week – two millennia ago
A few weeks ago, Mary R. Woldering has asked me to contribute a piece for her blog, with the theme of National Maritime Week. I have chosen to address the issue of the life of ancient galley-slaves, and who really rowed the naval war galleys. Below I reproduce the full post. Hi, and welcome to the […]
C’est fini
That’s it. It’s over. I’m done with it. Surely writing “The End” on yet another manuscript is the sweetest feeling ever 🙂 This one took a lot longer than Murder In Absentia. I blame the baby. I hope that as he grows up, I’ll get the next books finished quicker… So what’s next? And when […]
SciFi Round Table (a song for the ages)
Like most indie authors, I am a member of several Facebook groups. One of them is a particularly great place to hang out, the SciFi Round Table. Don’t let the name fool you, we cover lots of fantasy there as well. In a recent post, the admin and creator behind it asked for help in […]
