The Craft of Writing Archives - Page 6 of 32

Archive for the ‘The Craft of Writing’ Category

Making It Different – Pushing Genre Boundaries in Fantasy

by Martin Jenkins

One of the pleasures of genre is that it lets us identify a type of writing that we know we like. We’d feel short-changed if a crime novel didn’t feature a crime, after all, or if a romance didn’t put the travails of a relationship front and center. What we don’t want to see, however, is a mere repetition of genre tropes and clichés – it’s what is fresh and different in a work of fiction that keeps us turning the page while still being identifiably a genre work.

Epistolary Tales: The Narration of Documentation

by Ken Pelham

Occasionally, you come across a work of fiction told in the form of documents. Letters, court reports, diaries, news articles, and such. We call this epistolary narration (from the root word, epistle, meaning “letter”). Some call epistolary a gimmick. I can’t speak for anyone else, but I’m a sucker for it.

Writing Down Fear

by Hunter Liguore

What do you fear when you sit down to write? Fear can be the debilitating emotion that prevents us from getting into the chair in the first place. It’s the force that makes lengthy excuses for why we can’t write. Next to procrastination, fear can cause us to abandon projects, call it quits, or worse, abandon the writing completely.

Filtering Feedback: Strategies for Overcoming the Revision Doldrums

by Ian Muneshwar

We’ve all been there. The dreaded-but-anticipated moment when your beta readers return your manuscript draft, and you sift through their comments in search of their praise, reactions, and criticisms.

Seven Ways to Grow Your Resilience as a Writer

by Alex Woolf

No one enjoys being rejected. Writers, who are often a touch more sensitive than the average bear, may feel the sting even more acutely. Which is unfortunate, as the daily work of the writer involves rejection on an almost continuous basis.

Writing The Other Rechristens Financial Aid Program to Vonda N. McIntyre Sentient Squid Scholarship

News from Writing the Other:

Nisi Shawl and K. Tempest Bradford, administrators of Writing the Other online classes, are pleased to announce that their scholarship program, launched in 2016, is now retitled the Vonda N. McIntyre Sentient Squid Scholarship. This name change, in honor of the award-winning and beloved science fiction and fantasy novelist who passed away in April of this year, comes about not only because Vonda was a friend and mentor to both Shawl and Bradford, but also because without her there would be no scholarship fund.

New Life and Old Deadlines

by Noah K. Sturdevant

So you went and had a kid (or another one). Congratulations! Now you’re in the special club, where you may need to write to support your little bundle of joy, but don’t have any time to do so.

Age Is Just a Number

by Jeff Reynolds

When I was eight, I wrote my first short story. It was bad, as the writing of an eight-year-old tends to be, full of tropes and endless misspellings. It long ago disappeared into the trash bin of my personal history. But my teacher gave me an A on the work, and I was hooked.

Odyssey Writing Workshops Online Courses

News from The Odyssey Writing Workshops Charitable Trust: Odyssey has been a pioneer and innovator in holding live online classes since 2010. Live class meetings allow a virtual “physical college classroom” experience, in which students can participate in discussions, ask questions, and learn from an instructor who is responsive, in the moment, to students’ concerns, confusions, […]

Collaboration

by Daniel Brotzel

Finishing a book sounds like hard enough work when there’s just one of you. Can working with someone else really help? Yes! says Dan Brotzel, who’s recently launched a novel he wrote with two pals. Here’s the why and the how…