Creative Writing Prompts: Secrets and Lies for Your Characters
Nothing is better (or more fun for the writer) than a story-relevant secret or lie. Give some dilemma beneath the surface story to give your character depth, add suspense and tension, and keep your reader turning the pages. You can drop hints throughout your writing and when the reveal comes—you will surprise, shock, and delight your reader. Creating a character with a strong internal conflict, secret, or burden makes for one compelling read!
25 Insights on Becoming a Better Writer
When George Plimpton asked Ernest Hemingway what the best training for an aspiring writer would be in a 1954 interview, Hem replied, “Let’s say that he should go out and hang himself because he finds that writing well is impossibly difficult. Then he should be cut down without mercy and forced by his own self to write as well as he can for the rest of his life. At least he will have the story of the hanging to commence with.” Today, writing well is more important than ever. Far from being the province of a select few as it was in Hemingway’s day, writing is a daily occupation for all of us — in email, on blogs, and through social media. It is also a primary means for documenting, communicating, and refining our ideas.
Who invented the Caesar Salad?
For me, the Caesar Salad has been around as long as I've held a fork. Given the monumental name "Caesar", I spent most of my life assuming that this was some kind of "centuries old" and "passed down" salad dressing recipe, that perhaps traced its roots all the way back to ancient Rome, Greece, or maybe even somewhere in the Mediterranean. Its a simple enough salad recipe that could have been used generations ago. The recipe I'm familiar with (my favorite) consists of Romain lettuce, chopped anchovies, lemon juice, pepper, oil, vinegar, ... ingredients that were available back then.
25 Things You Should Know About Character
Previous iterations of the “25 Things” series: 25 Things Every Writer Should Know 25 Things You Should Know About Storytelling And now…
The Ultimate Guide to Writing Better Than You Normally Do.
Writing is a muscle. Smaller than a hamstring and slightly bigger than a bicep, and it needs to be exercised to get stronger. Think of your words as reps, your paragraphs as sets, your pages as daily workouts.
NetSpeedMonitor Monitors Your Network Speed and Data Transfer [Tool]
Updated: 12/18/2009 Home » Tools » NetSpeedMonitor Monitors Your Network Speed and… The built-in Network Status in Windows 7 doesn’t actually provide that much information as needed, for example, the transfer speed rate is one of those features missed.
The Thirty-Six Dramatic Situations
The Thirty-Six Dramatic Situations is a descriptive list which was created by Georges Polti to categorize every dramatic situation that might occur in a story or performance. To do this Polti analyzed classical Greek texts, plus classical and contemporaneous French works. He also analyzed a handful of non-French authors. In his introduction, Polti claims to be continuing the work of Carlo Gozzi, who also identified 36 situations. Publication history[edit] “Gozzi maintained that there can be but thirty-six tragic situations.
Writing Empathetically vs. Sympathetically and Sentimentally
Several weeks ago, I read a story that had a passage like this: "My parents never really cared about me," Allie said. "All my life they saw me as a disappointment, a waste of space.
Command Line Hack for: "Terminal Server Has Exceeded the Maximum Number of Allowed Connections"
If you’ve worked on a network with Windows servers, you’ve encountered this error message at least 37,000 times: “The terminal server has exceeded the maximum number of allowed connections. The system can not log you on. The system has reached its licensed logon limit.
Character Trait Cheat Sheet - Kris Noel
In order to create a relatable character, you must think about them as having several layers. Knowing and choosing character traits is important because you don’t want them to be one dimensional. It’s all not as simple as saying “this person is mean” or “this person is kind”.
Salvaging a Book + GIVEAWAY- Guest Post from Mou Saha
Hi everyone, Mou Saha here from Creating Keepsakes magazine. In spirit of green crafting, I had been salvaging an old book into my current art journal. Here’s a spread from that book. Here are my steps in visuals and captions. Hope you enjoyed my little process tutorial and would give it a try. If you like upcycling the stuff of life, you might enjoy the 4-week workshop I’m teaching at Big Picture Classes called Lift Me Up!
Drink Ideas: Glowing Drinks, Flaming Drinks, Fogging Drinks, Ice Shots, and More
Drinks that have a mysterious fog rolling out of them are a great conversation starter at any party. Making fogging drinks is easy with dry ice. Relax--it isn't poisonous, or extremely dangerous. Dry ice is just the frozen form of carbon dioxide, the gas we exhale.
How to Make a Fantasy World Map
Any good fantasy world deserves a map, but how does a world map go from your notebook to an espansive illustration that provides depth and information? Read on as Isaac Stewart shares his process for making the map for The Emperor’s Blades, the first book in Brian Staveley’s new fantasy series Chronicles of the Unhewn Throne. The book is out on January 14th but you can read the first seven chapters for FREE right here. (Did we mention it has ninjas that ride enormous hawks? It has ninjas that ride enormous hawks!) I was ten years old, holding a golden Nintendo cartridge in my hands.
PaperHaus Magazine: 30 Ways to add texture to your art journal pages by Lynn.
Hi everyone, Lynn here with some mixed media tips. If there is one thing I love, it's adding texture to my art journal pages (and mixed media canvases, and scrapbook pages...) For this technique, I wanted to show you as many ways to add texture as I could think of! For items that needed to be glued down, I put the type of glue I used in parentheses. I start by laying down mostly non-bulky texture.
