Recent content by arroncook

So what do people think of using third party transcription services for your drafts? Basically, I find it much easier to record and put together a spoke draft of a chapter (not to mention quicker in the midst of a hectic lifestyle) and I've been looking at paying someone to transcribe it. What...

How's about the protagonist's blood being the key to re-awakening magic into the world/restoring a previous way of things? I could see a really interesting novel about the psychological impact of needing to sacrifice oneself in death (obviously discovering that in your climax) for the sake of...

Ultimately, the aim is to write your dialogue with believability. You want people to interact with the dialogue, not by way of complex individual exegesis of words or phrases, but an almost poetic appreciation of the entire idea being conveys by the words. If you put the nuts and bolts together...

I diagram. I write their name, age, location and traits, and the from there just draw lines out to other things about them that emerge whilst I'm exploring who they're going to be. I find this gets my initial creative idea down, and from there, I start filling in important details that my...

Just have to be careful with definition and usage. If you clearly copy an entire concept, don't bother trying to publish it. But otherwise, just clearly demark and define the concept and you'll probably be fine.

Thanks! As a question, do you know of any apps that do something similar? I do a lot of my research and planning on my iPad rather than my Mac, so something like that would be really helpful. :)

It might sound strange, but I think sometimes, a world written in too much detail. If you write every single detail in such descriptive length that there's nothing left for me to create in my mind, it feels too "wooden" and too difficult to picture consistently in my mind whilst I read.

Hi there, My name is Arron, I'm a married-with-1 from the north of England. I've been reading fantasy for about 12 years, and have had numerous ideas buzzing around in my head for writing for a few wears, but through a busy job and family life I've never had much chance beyond a few scribbles...

I agree that all of the above can be overplayed - but surely some of these features, as long as they're well written, are actually features of the genre? I.e. evil antagonist with magical power? Think how many fewer classics there would be without that!