Browsing all articles tagged with Writer’s Wednesday.
Romance in Fantasy – Part One
I’ve said it before: I write romantic fantasy. I never start out a story intending to write romance, but somehow, romantic threads always show up. I used to fight this phenomenon, but I’ve grown to realize that I just like romantic storylines. Not romances, mind—I don’t read much romance that’s just romance for romance’s sake. […]
The Rulebreaker’s Guide to the Semicolon
When I started writing fiction again in November 2009, I just wrote. I didn’t care about what was okay, what was forbidden, and what was tolerable—I just purged my head of the story that had been stewing there for three years. It was raw and unpracticed and ugly, but there was something so authentic about […]
Mom Always Liked You Best: Siblings in Fantasy
In the world of relationships, there may be no more complex, teeth-gnashing, frustrating, and glorious relationship than the one between siblings. If you have at least one sibling, you probably remember the thousands of “yes-you-did-no-I-didn’t” fights you had growing up. You also most likely remember the times you ganged up on your parents and pulled […]
Parents and Children in Fantasy
Tis the Season for Novel Fodder: Parents and Children in Fantasy For many of us in the western world, December marks the annual party season that brings us in contact with all of our nearest and dearest. For some, this is welcome—a chance to catch up with friends and family. For others, it’s an opportunity […]
The Craft – Part Five: Criticism
This is the last in a series of articles talking with fantasy authors about the craft. You can read the previous posts here: Part One: Breaking In Part Two: The Business Part Three: Careers Part Four: Revision Criticism is always hard. People can put on stoic faces and even welcome criticism but the first time […]
The Craft – Part Four: Revision
This is the forth in a series of articles talking with fantasy authors about the craft. You can read the previous posts here: Part One: Breaking In Part Two: The Business Part Three: Careers Revision is a part of writing. Writers who can write perfect prose on their first draft are few and far between. […]
The Craft – Part Three: Careers
This is the third in a series of articles talking with fantasy authors about the craft. You can read part one here and part two here. There’s an old saying in publishing that “it’s one thing to be published, it’s an entirely different ball game to stay published.” Writers must walk a tightrope between delivering […]
The Craft – Part Two: The Business
This is the second in a series of articles talking with fantasy authors about the craft. You can see last week’s article, Breaking In, here. Being a published writer these days is about more than just writing books. Writers are working harder than ever to promote and publicise their work. Especially within fantasy, there are […]
The Craft – Part One: Breaking In
All aspiring writers dream of breaking in, of getting that deal and one day seeing their work in print, but the reality is that getting a deal is taking on a job – with contracts, expectations and deadlines. This, inevitably, means changes to routines as writing goes from being just a hobby to a part-time […]
Improving Description
So, you may have noticed that you clicked a different button to get onto the post today: “MJA” instead of “ARD”. Well, that’s because our beloved Amy Rose Davis has come down with an illness and as a result, the writer within wouldn’t let her publish a sub-standard article that she was sure would be […]
The Last Hurrah: A Farewell to Fantasy Faction
It is with a heavy heart that I write this, my final post for Fantasy-Faction. After much deliberation and consideration, I’ve come to the realization that in order to properly re-prioritize my life, a few things simply have to come to an end. I held out here as long as I could, y’all, but I […]
The Fantasy Feminist – Part 4
A comment from AE Marling on one of my recent blog posts about feminism in fantasy triggered some thoughts about another approach to bringing a feminist touch to our works—namely, what about the role of men in our stories? How can the men we write promote the idea that women are equal—not better, not the […]