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Recent content by We Rise Above

  1. W

    Xlibris and Smashwords

    Spectre, I've used Smashwords twice and thoroughly recommend it. However, as troynos said, I also suggest publishing using Amazon (Kindle Direct Publishing for e-books and Createspace for printed versions) in order to cover more bases. The learning curve for each platform is not that steep: it's...
  2. W

    Self publishing with CreateSpace

    I've published two books using CreateSpace and I thought the process worked very well. Make sure you follow the instructions closely, and you might want to order sample copies a couple of times to make sure everything's perfect. It does involve a bit of work, but holding the printed book in...
  3. W

    Step by Step Worldbuilding

    Reading Caters' post makes me glad that I don't have any story ideas that require that kind of detailed worldbuilding. I'm not sure I could handle that sort of intricacy. My worldbuilding tends to start on a character-based level: where is my protagonist? What's around them? What's around...
  4. W

    Why do we read and write fantasy?

    I think I read it for escapism, or because it exercises some part of my brain that non-fantasy novels don't touch. I write it because that seems to be the way my writing seems to go. It doesn't matter if I'm determined to set a story in the real world - very quickly, during my planning or...
  5. W

    Two observations today

    This has been such a cliche for so long that I'm always surprised to discover an author that uses it. Way back when, I regularly played D&D and anybody who created a character whose background involved something along the lines of "She was born to a noble family but she didn't want that kind of...
  6. W

    Fight scene heavy works and age of writer

    It's possible that age may be connected to the number of fight scenes - I feel that older writers are perhaps more aware of the importance of relationships and character in a story, rather than action. Besides, those older writers are able to call on more life experience, so they have a better...
  7. W

    Medieval Traffic Problems (offering a resource)

    It's a very impressive resource that I hadn't come across before. Thanks very much.
  8. W

    I'm absolutely overwhelmed.

    This was my approach. Let the story come first - after all, the world-building is window-dressing around the characters. If the reader doesn't care about them, the lore is irrelevant. I found that I was drip-feeding bits and pieces of world-building into the text in later drafts, only once I...
  9. W

    Perspectives You'd Like To See More Of?

    I admire anybody who can write from the perspective of somebody or something non-human. After all, it can be hard enough writing from the perspective of somebody younger/older than you, or of a different sex. Kudos to those stepping inside a dragon's head.
  10. W

    Ordinary People

    Quite right. I've recently found a couple of books where a great idea was hidden beneath a style that just put me off completely. For example, The Hundred-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out the Window and Disappeared (not fantasy, I know): the basic idea is great but I found Jonas Jonasson's writing...
  11. W

    How to start your story?

    This is so true. It's only when the story is over that you can go back and think: "Is this really the best point to begin? Or does the story actually start in chapter 2?" It has been said elsewhere that in many early drafts, particularly by new authors, the first three chapters can often be...
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