The Magic of Being in Monk Mode. Jim Butcher On Writing. Jim Butcher's posts on the art and craft of writing are the best I've read and have been of enormous help to me.
I often recommend these posts but haven't found any one place where all the URLs are listed. True, most of them can be found on Jim's Livejournal blog but they appear (as one would expect) in reverse order and there's no index. I likely haven't gathered all the links to all Jim's articles on writing so if you know of one that isn't listed, please mention it in the comment section and provide the URL if you have it. Thanks! Jim Butcher's Posts On Writing These posts are all from Jim Butcher's Livejournal blog. With Video Game Writing, the Devil Lives in the Details.
3 Simple Grammar Tips to Improve Your Writing. As an editor, I encounter certain grammatical mistakes time and time again.
Errors aren’t necessarily a reflection of a writer’s intelligence – it makes sense that with all the quick, informal writing we do nowadays (emails, texts, etc.), and the universal availability of no-thinking-required writing resources like spell-check and Google searches, we’re lazier writers compared to previous generations. However, despite their widespread occurrence, grammatical blunders can be costly mistakes if made in certain contexts – such as a cover letter for a job or another important document.
Fortunately, if you get these three grammar tips down pat, you’ll be able to avoid many common grammar gaffs. 1. Stop Using the Wrong Word. Qiandao Lake, Diving into sunken Lion City (Liquid Image HD320) Neil Gaiman's 8 Rules of Writing. By Maria Popova In the winter of 2010, inspired by Elmore Leonard’s 10 rules of writing published in The New York Times nearly a decade earlier, The Guardian reached out to some of today’s most celebrated authors and asked them to each offer his or her commandments.
After Zadie Smith’s 10 rules of writing, here come 8 from the one and only Neil Gaiman: WritePut one word after another. Find the right word, put it down.Finish what you’re writing. 30 Indispensable Writing Tips From Famous Authors. The 22 rules of storytelling, according to Pixar. Art.
Starting. Editing. World Building. Tools. Writing Tips for Fiction Writers. How To Write A Novel Using The Snowflake Method. Writing a novel is easy.
Writing a good novel is hard. Story Structure & Plot - Novel Writing Tips. Conflict and Character within Story Structure The Basic Three Act Structure.
Odyssey Writing Tips Page #2. The plot forms the underlying structure of your story, and if that structure is weak, the story will be weak as well.
Many times it's hard for the writer to see the underlying structure of his own story, and this makes it impossible for the writer to judge whether this structure is effective and whether it is the best possible structure for the story. One powerful method of revealing the structure of a story is to outline it. The outline reveals the bones of the story like an X-ray.
You may outline a story before you write it, creating the framework of bones and then building on it, or you may write a rough draft of the story first and then outline it, revealing the underlying framework and making necessary adjustments. What is conflict. Beginners are always told to have conflict in every scene.
Keep that story moving! But what is conflict? Too often it is taken to mean an "Odd Couple's" squabbling. That's an easy and obvious conflict. For instance, she's an urban animal, into cappuccino and corporate power games, he works a small ranch and loves the land; they are thrown together when her company decides to develop land next to his; they meet as enemies, but sparks fly.... Conflict can be more subtle, more complex, more interesting than "she says tomayto, he says tomahto.
" Monomyth Website, ORIAS, UC Berkeley. How to write a novel* Ever wanted to write a novel but had no clue how?
Having just finished my fifth novel, I am now ready to pass on my accummulated novel-writing wisdom to those what have never writ one but wants to. Here is the complete, full and unexpurgated guide: Plunge Right In... Into Your Story, That Is! By Rekha Ambardar One of the things you're required to do when taking swimming lessons is to jump in at the deep end of the pool, dive under water smoothly, and rise up to the surface.
For most swimmers, diving under the water and then swimming to the surface poses hardly any problem; it's the jump at the deep end that unnerves one. Most of us prefer to ease in unobtrusively from any other area of the pool and loiter at the deep end, pretending that we did jump in. Stupid Plot Tricks. Excerpted from my lecture on Stupid Plotting Tricks By Teresa Nielsen Hayden Start with some principles:
CALLIHOO Writing Idea Generators: The 37 Dramatic Situations. The Thirty-six (plus one) Dramatic Situations Georges Polti says that all stories boil down to just 36 dramatic situations and takeoffs of those situations. Somebody else out there added #37. If you're stuck for a situation, try this. A situation appears below randomly (in bold print). If you'd like more information, or want to see the subplots for the situation, click on its link below. (Note: In several cases, specific gender in the original descriptions has been replaced with non-specific gender. Your situation: 27. Still stuck for plot ideas? Cosmic Thoughts | Oblique Strategies | Random Science Fiction Story Ideas. Conflict Test. 1. Does one of the characters have to change in order for the conflict to be resolved? _____ Yes, Score 1 _____ No, Score 0 _____ Both characters change, Score 2 2.
Can conflict be resolved with a good, honest heart-to-heart between your characters? Plot. No whitespace - writers' cheatsheet. Article of The Month. This is a quick exercise designed to sketch out the major events of your novel. It only gives you a map-- you have to make the drive yourself! Get a kitchen timer or set your alarm. You're going to free-write for three minutes on several questions. (If you want to cheat and write for five minutes on each, go ahead. Article of The Month. Novel Outlining 101. Concept: To create a weblog post that presents a simple method of outlining a novel. Plan: Demonstrate the method by using it to outline the post, then use the outline to write the post itself. Prologue: Outlining DemoPart One: Introduction to Novel Outlining, Definitions, PurposePart Two: Examples of Outlined Scenes, Chapters and PartsPart Three: Common problems, Suggested Resolutions, FinaleEpilogue: Links to other posts and articles on novel outlining at PBW and elsewhere I.
Novel Outlining A novel outline is a story plan, written in the abbreviated form of a traditional outline with headings and subheadings. Writing The Perfect Scene. Fightscenes101.co.uk. One-Page Plotting. Jimbutcher: The Great Swampy Middle. Every writer runs into this, generally in every single book.