Generating Ideas For Your Next Novel – Fiction University

Over on Fiction University, I found (amongst others) a huge list of ways to assist with the generation of story ideas. There are quite a few, but this post helpfully draws them together in one user-friendly list. Check it Out... Ideas and Brainstorming  That first rush of an idea is always fun, but sometimes the …

A GUIDE TO WRITING MAGIC SYSTEMS – Fantasy-Hive

I've been kicking around a few story ideas and what I've noticed is that they don't all neatly fit into one genre, but there are some commonalities in some of them. I've never really written fantasy, haven't read much in that genre since I was a lot younger, so I did a bit of digging …

GDPR And Brexit For Authors #1

Brexit comes into being for real (finally) at the end of this year, putting an exclamation point on an already bad year. For those that don't know about Brexit (although I don't know how you've missed it - it's been in the news for the last 225 years), Brexit is when the UK decided to …

Has Your Antagonist Stolen Your Story? — A Writer’s Path

by Kyle Massa   Protagonist: the character who propels your story forward. Usually the main character. Antagonist: the character who impedes that forward progress. Usually a supporting character. Seem simple enough. Except when it’s not. What if your antagonist is more compelling than your protagonist? Contrary to conventions, what if your villain feels more […]Has Your …

Six Word Horror Saturday – Plotting or Planning? How To Plot A Novel The Six Word Way!

Something a little extra today. Last week as one of my six word horror stories, I offered: The door shook. It wouldn't hold. I posted this to my facebook page and added the picture: I asked if people had any other six word suggestions, and got several good ones, which I'll share later. But what …

4 Story Weaknesses That Lead to a Sagging Middle – Tiffany Yates Martin [Reblog]

Tiffany Yates Martin has written a guest post over on Jane Friedman's site talking about how to keep your story moving in the sometimes sagging middle part of your story. This is certainly something that I have struggled with, so read on to learn from Tiffany about how you might tackle that... Photo credit: ce2de2 on Visual hunt / CC …

Productivity Hacks for Busy People

The next-gen hacks that follow have been developed over many years of research, and a lot of trial and error. This information is strictly exclusive to this blog's readers, and under NO CIRCUMSTANCES, should they be shared with anyone, living or dead. Now we’ve got that out of the way, let’s press on. As a …

How You Can Improve Newsletter Results [Reblog] – PH Solomon

I've talked recently about getting your email list set up and how you can go about adding people to that list. What I didn't talk about was what you do after that. Most people approach it with a newsletter, but if you've ever tried that and looked at the results, you may be disheartened. PH …

6 Tips for Adding Life to Your Locations [Reblog] Nicholas Rossis

Jut read a post from Author Nicholas Rossis about adding life to you locations. My current WIP is set mainly in one location, but I want to ensure I set that one location up in the bed way possible. Nicholas post is a summary of another which he recommends you read as well, but for …

To Be Or Not To Be? Maybe Not! [Reblog] – Audrey Driscoll

I came across a post recently about 'crutch' words - words that we sometimes lean on when perhaps others would be better, or better yet, the sentence that they're in needs revising. Typically, I lost track of that post, but Today I came across a very similar post from Audrey Driscoll, talking about one such …