Why would anyone want to fold time? In the narrative, there are times when interesting things don’t happen, and the story skips forward. There are a few ways to accomplish this while still keeping the reader interested, but the most common way is the scene break. What happened here? Well, the character went to bed and woke
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Writer Hate and the Dreaded 30K Slump
I think this has been asked before but how do you make yourself continue writing something when you’ve started to hate it? You mentioned getting through Ruby Fire was difficult but you couldn’t extend your deadlines. If the idea of a looming deadline doesn’t work for a person as a reason to continue writing, what
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Tenses, Distance, and Persons
I don’t understand all the tenses… No worries, let’s clear this up. POV, point of view, is the perspective from which the story is told to us. It is characterized by three things: person, distance, and tense. Person POV can be first person, second person, or third person. First person First person uses pronoun I.
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Monsters, Characters, and Voices
I got very little sleep last night. The saga of Sookie continues, so please excuse me if I sound less coherent than usual. Also the novel has crossed 100K and when I mentioned this fact to Mod R, instead of being supportive and saying things like, “It will end eventually,” she basically said, “All the
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The Three Character Types
One question on worldbuilding/creating characters. I have noticed that all the main characters in your universes are SupremelyCompetent® in something. Probably because they are all adults by now, but they either had family to teach them how to flash white, is a werewolf/vampire trained in an academy/their families, is an innkeeper with extensive training, or
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Nature of the Series: Episodic vs Progressive
Today we’re resurrecting an older post by popular demand. We archive most posts after 3-4 years, because the publishing world moves fast and what might be accurate today is completely off the mark tomorrow. Because time is short, we bulk-archive, meaning we hide all of the posts either by date or the category and sometimes
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Adverbs and Proper Use
July blog prompts have arrived. If you are wondering how these happen, Mod R combs your comments and questions you send in and then compiles them for each month. You have very unique comparisons and metaphors when you write descriptions. Are they just things you come up with naturally, or do you have helping tools
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Writing What You Hate
You guys say the key to being an author is to love the grind. And while I love writing I have a hard time getting to the finish line. I usually hop around to new projects leaving half finished worlds behind in my wake like a serial world killer. I recently challenged myself to just
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Hours and Hours
In any number of careers you would need to take training courses or maintain qualifications. As writers, have you done anything more formal, after university, to hone your talent or is there something you plan/want to do in the future? Anything you found really helpful? Aside from just putting in the hours and hours actually
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How do you explain the magic of the world?
Yesterday I had to go to jury duty. I knew I wasn’t going to get picked when the defense attorney told a story about trying to bake an apple pie in college. The pie didn’t turn out because he forgot to put shortening in it. Then he said, “DNA is like an apple pie. You
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Passive Voice
Could you explain the passive voice to me?” J. Let’s make this short and sweet. In an active sentence the subject acts; in a passive sentence the subject is being acted upon. Why do people advise against using passive voice. vs The second example is clearer, faster, and reads better. When should you use passive
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Fights and banter
We’ve had a stressful couple of weeks trying to navigate through my father’s visit and trying to save one of our dog’s eye from infection while feverishly editing and writing. Sorry for no new posts. I’m trying something new, for me at least. Okay I’ve got this fight scene where 8 different fights are happening
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