Writing an epic fantasy is super fun. There are magical forces to conjure up, heroic characters to mold, cities and landscapes to create ... and, eventually (womp, womp), a battle to write.
Some fantasy writers, to be sure, love to write battles. For them, the whole story has been building up to this height of conflict, when bad guy meets good guy and the fate of Middle Earth is on the brink. But, I gotta tell ya, I loathe writing battles.
Read Moret's a difficult thing: deciding whether a career is good for you. If there's no glamor in it, we wonder why we aren't chasing our dreams. If there's no money in it, we enviously scroll through facebook pictures of friends with newly minted graduate degrees. If there's glitz and money in it, but no chicken soup for the soul ... well, frankly, I wouldn't know what that's like. But, I can imagine those people also can feel there's something better out there.
The trick is to analyze unhappiness.
Read MoreThere’s nothing wrong with a little diversity in reading. No, I’m not talking about Jamaican settings or Hindu protagonists (although, those are fun too). I’m talking about diversity of genre. I like to shake it up, because I’m not always in the right mood for the same book day after day. Call it literary ADD, I’d rather call it well rounded.
Read MoreSo far, my biggest hurdle in writing a novel has been the first few pages.
There is an insane amount of pressure to make the first pages of your manuscript mind-blowing, and more than a few "guidelines" have been provided by literary agents and publishers alike. The problem is, these guidelines aren't exactly a recipe for a brilliant book so much as they are ways to cut back on the number of pages a member of the publishing industry has to read before he feels justified in shooting the manuscript down.
Here are some classic rules for the first ten pages of a novel that I have come across in my research:
Read MoreThe title of the webinar was "Writing and Selling Young Adult Fiction." Sounds pretty perfect, am I write (heh)? It was hosted by a literary agent, and the fee included a critique of my first 750 words.
Let me tell you my overall feeling once I was finished with this webinar: utter hopelessness. You want to know why? Two scary words: HIGH CONCEPT.
Read MoreHere is a sampling of the sub-categories I was horrified to find.
ADVENTURE & SURVIVAL, CHOICES & TRANSITIONS, HORROR AND SUSPENSE, SEXUALITY, SUBSTANCE ABUSE, and my personal favorite, PARANORMAL ROMANCE.
There is so much wrong with this picture.
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