Recent content by JSDR

It depends on what kind of story you're writing, which is your promise to the reader. Are you writing about a character? Are you writing about a world? Are you writing about a catastrophic event the character is trying to stop or cataylse? They type of story you want to tell may dictate how...

Here's the thing about character sheets. 1) They can become time sinks. Filling out forms and questionaires can take up to hours. 2) You might develop the character more than you develop the conflicts and the plots. 3) They can inadvertently trap your character in Caricature mode. By this I...

Hey Spider! I love dialogue-heavy scenes. I did a module on editing dialogue scenes on my blog a few weeks ago. I think...Work In Progress: Dialogue Part 3 might be a good place to start. Might want to look at part 4 also, where I put a lot of things together to show how tweaking little...

If by Novel 1, you mean literally the first novel you've ever completed, and now your first, immortal love feels like a passing crush, it might be indicative of something else. I'll lay down some *might be painful* truth here: Perhaps, and really think about this, perhaps novel 1 was a...

Hi Tom! Robert Bevan, forum member here and Indie-Author of CRITICAL FAILURES, did a wonderful post on dialects in dialogue here: Work In Progress: Dialogue Part 5 There's a few other dialogue posts there that might help. Personally, I've found the best way to express dialects is to write...

I have a miserably low alcohol tolerance. I'm literally wasted, as in a waste of human molecules, on half a glass of wine. Therefor, I don't write while intoxicated. I might Beta while sloooooowly sipping a beer. I *do* drunk-tweet.

It's a compulsion. I *have* to write like a shark needs to swim. That's an option I didn't see.

To the OP's original questions: It never is "not coming" with me. It used to be "I don't have time to physically sit still and type out stories" so I solved that by getting up super early to Write for about 5 hours a day. (To me, Writing takes in the whole totality of creating or improving a...

Heh. I prefer it in subtext. "Gadzooks, Bob! An Ice troll!" "They're larger than the books/my tutors said they'd be."

It's a given that a character may experience many "firsts" and therefore it's handy to reach for the "She'd never butchered a unicorn before" construction. It is acceptable a few times. Just a few, because it highlights the "First time" feeling of the scene and may downplay, to the detriment...

Are you writing the story for a publisher? Or are you writing the story for the story's sake? Heh, the point is you can't please everyone. There's no spreadsheet where people keep tallies of how many you use the f-word, c-word, etc. (unless it happens to be your senior thesis for college.)...

If I'm reading the OP correctly, it's already at 10k, plus another 5-6k planned? I'll speak from my experiences beta-reading (IDK why the writers I beta for favor long chapters o.O) and as a reader (not looking at this from the writer's POV). Also gonna take into account the info that it's...

Ok, cool. I sort of got that with what you were trying to do. Now let's take a step back and take a look at the bigger picture. Plant the guard *in* your world. I feel like, from the previous attempts, you are *you* the writer, trying to describe what the guard is doing. How about putting...

It's a great line with a great rhythm. This is how I read it: His ROBE sir. Those COLors. They SHIFT and FLOW like -" he paused, "MOLten rock." Now here's my issue with how it's punctuated and using the word "paused" as the beat. It's a little heavy-handed, like "just in case the dear reader...

Hey Dan - Cool effect for the character. RE the hand motion - I'd actually suggest keeping it as simple as possible: The guard smoothed a hand down his chest. Here's why: The description he says right afterwards: "The colors melt and flow like molten rock" is magnificent. It's awesome. Let me...