Commas…To Avoid Confusion
Lady Rosalie Skinner
In an effort to educate myself, I am taking a deeper, longer and more exhaustive look at commas. The most basic use for commas is to indicate a pause where…
writing advice
Surviving the NaNoWriMo Apocalypse: Tips For Becoming A Master Word-Slayer And Staying Alive Through November
Adrian Faulkner
NaNoWriMo tends to get painted as this quirky, fun activity during the month of November, but whether you’re currently taking part or have in the past, you know that it’s…
NaNoWriMo Type Along with Stephen Deas – Week One
Stephen Deas
Follow along as Stephen Daes shares his week by week experience doing NaNoWriMo. If you missed Stephen’s intro article, you can read it here. November 1st Wordcount Target: 0 Words…
Writing Fantasy Gender Stereotypes – Part One: Your Heroine is Too Beautiful
Faith M. Boughan
I’m not trying to open a can of worms here—I’ll say that right off the bat. I acknowledge that this topic is enormous, complex, and encompasses both a dearth of…
National Novel Writing Month
It’s that time of year again, when my Twitter stream is going to fill up with the hash-tag #nanowrimo; and a good few of you, if not most, if not…
Ten Fantasy Clichés That Should Be Put To Rest
Eric Christensen
Anyone who follows celebrity gossip knows there is a downside to fame. Addictions, bankruptcy, and sex scandals threaten to tarnish a star’s image. Perhaps the biggest downside of fame is…
The Chaotic Champion – Part Nine: Order and Chaos
Nyki Blatchley
I’ve spent most of this series discussing how the figure of the Chaotic Champion works in story. My contention is that he’s* a universal concept in human story, whether the…
The Rulebreaker’s Guide to the Semicolon
Amy Rose Davis
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…
Five Ways To Use NaNoWriMo As Your Writing R&D Department
November sees the arrival of NaNoWriMo, the challenge to write a 50,000 word novel in just 30 days. In a couple of weeks many of you will be writing like…
The Chaotic Champion – Part Eight: Which Kind of Hero Are You?
So far in this series, I’ve been concentrating on describing, in the most straightforward way, the various categories of Chaotic Champion and how each works. As I said in the…
Believable Fantasy Character Design
Ben Galley
Enter a man. He is tall, ruggedly handsome, a pinch over six foot, with eyes of swirling green and blue. His arms were toned and muscular, and there was a…
Small Press vs. Self-Publishing
Ashley Barnard
Given the choice, I feel safe in saying that the vast majority of writers would prefer to be published with a large publishing house, particularly after a bidding war that…