Tag: art of writing
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Book Review: Word Painting Revised Edition the Fine Art of Writing Descriptively, by Rebecca McClanahan
For November, and NaNoWriMo month for many of my fellow writers, I thought it would be appropriate to review a book that covers an important part of writing craft – description. There aren’t many books out there about this topic and indeed it would be a challenge to cover the subject in a way that…
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Insights with Tarot
Last week my friend and all together interesting guy, Dennis Morrison, came to the Oquirrh Writers Chapter meeting (part of the League of Utah Writers) to educate about the history of tarot cards and also teach about how they can be used to help guide decision making and give insights into one’s life. I’ve always…
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“The Magic System Mad Science Experiment” by Ryan Decaria
Magic and Science? It’s my dream come true! When it comes to magic there are two distinct teams. One team cheers for hard magic systems, such as what’s found in Brandon Sanderson’s books, where there are clear rules and limitations. The opposing team cheers for soft or undefined magic, such as what’s found in The…
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Researching the Daydream, by Amy Beatty
Probably one of the most frustrating thing I hear about fantasy authors is the belief that we make everything up. We come up with a world, stick people in it, add a touch of magic, and voila! Fantasy story. The end. The truth is, we actually do a fair amount of research. Precise details can…
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The Magic System of Stonebearer’s Betrayal
Magic, the final frontier, these are the voyages of… Wait a minute, wrong franchise. But seriously, let’s talk about the different kinds of magic that appear in Stonebearer’s Betrayal. In the world of Roshnii, a choice few are born with magic in them. Despite the historians efforts to link it to lineage, it appears at…
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Writing Exercise: Three Nouns
One of the toughest parts of the writing process is getting started on a new project. While the easiest way to overcome white page paralysis is to embrace the “crappy first draft” idea there are other options. Today’s writing exercise comes from WritingExercises.co.uk where you can find hundreds of prompt generators, randomizers, and all other…
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Using Rites and Rituals in Fiction
We’ve come around back to writer Wednesday once more and today we are talking about using rites and rituals in fiction. When I say rites and rituals, I’m referring to any choreographed set of actions performed by several people that is meant to add importance to an event. For the sake of this post we…
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Keeping the Story Real
It’s writing Wednesday and yet another chance to inundate the webverse with more unsolicited writing advice. Woo Hoo! Today’s topic is about keeping it real when it comes to plotting a story. I’m sure we’ve all seen or read at least one story where something happens that’s hopefully exciting or at least vaguely interesting, but…
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Writing Fresh
It’s writing Wednesday and today we are going to talk about writing fresh. Each writing conference I attend teaches me something new and sometimes these lessons profoundly change the way I think about writing. At this month’s LDStorymakers writing conference one of the most influential lessons I took to heart was also one of the simplest.…
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Grammarland: Then vs Than
It’s Writer Wednesday here and today we will tackle a mini grammar concept – the difference between then and than. These writing-themed posts used to be the weekly mainstay of my other blog, My Literary Quest, but will now be hosted here and reblogged there. Then can be used as three different parts of speech,…