Hello again writers!
We’re away from our keyboard this week enjoying the holidays, but that doesn’t mean the writing advice needs to slow down, especially with a backlog as deep as Being a Better Writer‘s! So, while we’re catching up on our reading and gaming backlog, have this near decade-old Classic BaBW post to enjoy! Hit that jump, and we’ll see you with fresh content again soon.
Welcome back, writers! Monday here, post-Thanksgiving break, and that means we’re back delivering Being a Better Writer for you to read. Or, more accurately from the site traffic these days, for AI to steal and barf up as part of the slop somewhere else that someone paid a couple of bucks for.
Yes, I’m still getting inundated with AI scrapers and quite unhappy about it. But … I have hope that the bubble is nearing the point where it’s soon to pop. Especially with sites like ChatGPT preparing to insert advertisements into answers to drive revenue. I’m really just trying to outlast the thieves, but it’s a game of chicken, that’s for sure. One where I’m losing out simply by existing, which is really a downer.
Okay, enough on that topic, and onto happier news! Axtara – Armies and Accounting is now in Alpha! You can read more about that here, though there honestly isn’t too much more to it than that. In that post I also mention the upcoming Christmas holiday plans—there will be Classic BaBW posts during that period—and … yeah, it’s a short post. Sometimes it’s just nuts and bolts and there’s a lot going on, but very little to talk about. And since we’re not a bunch of MBA’s sitting around the table at a mandatory meeting that must last at least three hours or it suggests the figure at the head of the table isn’t important enough … we’re just going to end the preamble here, and dive into today’s BaBW.
Which, I admit, may have gotten laughs of disbelief from a few of you. “That is the topic of the day? How is that a topic?”
But, no, I’m not pulling your chain. I’m serious! In fact, so are a lot of others. Today’s topic may not apply to everyone that’s a new writer, but I do see and experience a regular flow of writers who drop into cons or onto online writing groups to ask “Hey, how many characters should my story have? And how many is too many?”
So hit that jump, and let’s talk about this question.
Continue readingHey writers! As foretold with last week’s Being a Better Writer, this week I’m off from making a new post on account of Thanksgiving weekend. That said, we’re taking a look at a classic BaBW post that still sees a regular number of hits because … Well, just look at that title.
No preamble, nothing else to discuss (as said, I’m off for the weekend). So without further ado, hit the jump, and let’s revisit this classic.
Welcome back, writers! I hope you didn’t mind the one-week break in our regularly scheduled postings. Though I do sincerely hope you enjoyed the preview that was offered in its place. The Phoenix was a ton of fun to write, and I think all of you will agree it’s a ton of fun to read as well. Even if you might have been left on a bit of a cliffhanger.
Though I can offer some solace on that last part. Because last Friday I dropped the second preview chapter on the site. So if you were intrigued by the premise of a man who can’t die attempting to solve his own murder, you can see where that went after his escape from the morgue right now by clicking this link here. And after that, I do hope you pre-order a copy for yourself. This one is a ton of fun.
Okay, but leaving aside that and last week’s news—the link is for your perusal—let us welcome the first topic from Topic List #28! Yes, that’s right, it’s here at last and I’m pretty excited for it. There are some really unique topics on this list, as well as a return to some classics we haven’t talked about in some time, and I’m looking forward to each and every one of them.
Starting with today’s topic. Now, I realize that from the title some of you might already be wondering “Okay, what possible writing lesson could there be with a title like that?” And that’s … fair. That’s the risk of making titles that are plays on words. Trust me, once we get into this, it’s gonna make sense. Because today we’re talking about a pretty vital part of fiction. One that some works, sadly, fail to deliver, and ultimately consign themselves to mediocrity or worse over.
So hit that jump. Let’s talk about consequences.
Continue readingWelcome once again, writers of all experience! Monday has arrived, and so too has your weekly installment of Being a Better Writer. And today we’ve got an interesting topic to cover that’s probably going to range even further than I expect.
But, before we dive into that, I do want to direct each of you to last week’s news post, because there’s a poll involved. Yeah, going for the complicated stuff.
Seriously, go give it a look and if you would, please answer the poll. It is with regards to an upcoming book cover, and I’d like feedback.
Now, once you’ve done that—thank you—we can dive into today’s topic. Which I’ll admit is a bit of an odd one from the title. In fact, some of you might be looking at it and wondering exactly how it ended up being a topic in the first place.
Well, I’ll answer that to start with. The way I see it, there’s a lot of confusion these days over what makes a character “powerful” and how to scale them with your story. For example, and I kid you not, I have seen young writers making “tier lists” or “skill lists” for their story planning, where they write out all of the protagonists and antagonists abilities (almost always combat focused), sometimes giving them numbers that really are entirely meaningless save as an indicator of “power,” and then cross-compare the two to create … a math equation.
Continue readingWelcome back, writers! Unless you’re brand-new today, you know what this is. It’s this week’s installment of Being a Better Writer! Which is—again, if you’re new—exactly what it sounds like on the tin: A weekly guide to all things writing! Fully searchable, tagged by topics, etc.
Anyway, if you’re a veteran reader of the site, you know this. And you’re just wondering how exactly we’re going to cover today’s topic. I will give a brief, one-sentence aside to promote last week’s news here, but that’s all. We’re diving right in. Starting with how this topic ended up on the topic list.
There’s an old story, one that may be untrue, or may have happened exactly like it’s told. A story about L. Frank Baum, the man who wrote The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. It’s said that during the writing of one of his books, his wife noticed him being in a funk and not getting any writing done. When she asked him what the matter was, he replied “My characters won’t do what I want.”
His morose attitude persisted for about a week or two, or so goes the story I read, until one day his wife suddenly found him in high spirits typing away. “Oh,” she said, “I thought you were having trouble getting your characters to do what you wanted them to do?”
“Ah, I was,” he said. “But we found a solution. I’m decided to let them do whatever they want!”
Continue readingWelcome back, writers! We’re here once again with another installment of Being a Better Writer, talking about writing advice, tricks, and tools of the trade.
Speaking of which, if you want to immerse yourself in three days of writing education, be sure to attend the Life, The Universe, and Everything writing symposium this Thursday through Friday! I’ve already posted my schedule for the event, but there’s a whole lot more going on, and it’s always a blast to attend. If you can’t make it this year, then plan ahead for next year. Because if you’re a writer, especially of Science-Fiction and/or Fantasy, this is the event to attend.
All right, I’ve talked a lot about LTUE over the last two weeks. It’s coming, you should know about it, and it’s awesome. With that said, let’s dive into today’s Being a Better Writer topic.
I’ll admit that I’m currently thinking over this topic myself with regards to a scene I quite literally just wrote in Axtara – Armies and Accounting. It’s not that it’s a bad scene. It has characters interacting as they make the final leg of a journey and talking with one another in order to keep their minds off of the pressure of the big plot elements they’re headed into.
But even as I finished that bit and the characters arrived, I couldn’t help but wonder if I really needed it. It was good dialogue, sure, and we learned some more about some characters and their place in the world, as well as the world at large, but … was it too much?
Now, I’ll probably leave that up to the pre-Alpha or the Alpha Readers, but it’s an example of what we’re talking about today in more ways than one. Today, as you hit that jump, we’re going to talk about the balancing of our dialogue. Is it too much? Too little? And is there more we need to include when two or more characters have a discussion?
Continue readingHey folks! I’m out of the office this week attending Thanksgiving, so this week’s Being a Better Writer post is a blast from the past! November of 2017, to be specific. And it’s a pretty nifty one. Give it a read, and I’ll see you next week!
When you go to the grocery store, what do you call the wheeled apparatus that you collect your groceries in? Is it a shopping cart? Or is it a carriage? Or a trolley?
I’m willing to bet that a good number, if not most of you said “shopping cart.” But if you were from the American northeast—say, Connecticut or Rhode Island—there’s a high chance that you said “Carriage” instead. Or that you might say “bubbler” instead of “water fountain.” Or “soda pop” instead of “soda.” Or crud, maybe you’re even one of those individuals who calls all sodas “coke.” You know, as in “Get me a coke,” followed by “What do you want?” and “Oh, a Pepsi.”
All of these differences (and many, many more, from snow machine to snowmobile) are examples of what are know as “regional dialects.” Which makes today’s post a bit of a companion piece to last week’s on accents. And, I must admit, this topic wasn’t on the list, but after a comment about the concept by reader ocalhoun (no, I don’t know how you pronounce that either, but I’ve always read it as “o-cull-hoon”) brought up the subject, I realized that it was worth posting about, rather than just giving it an offhand mention as I had previously done.
So, dialects! What are they, how do they come about, and—this part is a bit key—what separates a dialect from an accent? Because yes, they are two different things. You can have two individuals with the same accent but a different dialect.
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Welcome back, writers and readers alike! It’s Monday, and you know what that means! Being a Better Writer is here again, ready to discuss writing topics and concepts. And today? We’re revisiting one of our most famous posts.
Oh, but before I get distracted too readily, Axtara – Magic and Mischief is now available in paperback! Check out the post here, or just grab the book here or at your local bookstore!
Back on track! Now, I don’t mean “revisit” in the context of “we’re going back and reinventing or redefining that post.” Nope, not at all. In fact, I’d consider this post more of a follow-up, an exploration of that post’s ideas and themes, diving deeper, than anything else. I suppose at this point I should suggest that if you haven’t read that post I’m referring to, Writing the Opposite Gender, you probably should. This post isn’t going to disagree with that one. But it is going to go a step further. Specifically, today’s post is about the cheese in the lasagna, and where it comes from or may influence your work. Confused? Well, you should probably brush up on that prior post. And once you’ve done that, let’s hit the jump and dive right in.
Continue readingWelcome back, writers! We’ve got a doozy of a topic to handle today, but I think we’re more than capable of diving into it with aplomb, don’t you?
But before we do, there is a little bit of news to drop. If you missed the announcement last week, Axtara – Magic and Mischief is now one of my most successful launches. In fact, the only metric it hasn’t outperformed Starforge in is revenue … but that’s a bit understandable considering Starforge was a much larger book and launched at $9.99 rather than Magic and Mischief‘s $5.99 price point. In every other metric, Magic and Mischief has smashed all records. And that’s before the launch of the paperback (which is being worked on).
Now, in other news, the draft for The Phoenix has been completed. Yup, that’s right, it’s already done. Took me about three weeks, and wound up at a total of 76,000 words long. Which, I will note, is 60,000 words shorter than the original draft I wrote for it eleven years ago.
Yeah, cutting a few needless subplots and cleaning up the overarching plot definitely helped. So what now? Well, now it sits for a little while. It needs to rest, and my mind needs to step away and look at other projects that have been waiting under a similar rest.
Which means that, yes, in the coming week, I’ll be going over that untitled Jacob Rocke adventure I wrote last year and polishing it up in Pre-Alpha, getting it ready for new eyeballs and an Alpha Read. Jacob Rocke readers, your ship has finally come in. He’s getting his first new adventure since 2018’s Last Call of Christmas Eve and his first new book since One Drink came out all the way back in 2011.
And once editing has begun on that, I’ll start work on my next book project: Axtara – Armies and Accounting. Yeah, book three of Axtara is getting tackled soon. And I’d say that’s pretty good news!
But we’re not just here for news. We’re here to talk writing, so without further ado, let’s get down to it and start talking about today’s topic: Crafting more in-depth character emotion. Some of you might be wondering about that title, but I’m going to leap right in and say that the key element there, the real crux of today’s discussion, is one little word.
More.
Hit the jump, and let’s talk about it.
Continue reading
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