It seems quite appropriate to be looking at naming fictional places this week, as I have just spent some time over the last few days re-naming one of the places in my current Work In Progress (more on that later). First of all, apologies for the August hiatus. I would like to say this was… Continue reading The Name Game: Places
Category: Turning Ideas Into Words
Outlining A Novel
I say half a lesson because the analogy is not a perfect one (as you will see), but it is an image I quite frequently relate to when it comes to my writing. Quirrell came back out from behind the Mirror and stared hungrily into it. “I see the stone… I’m presenting it to my… Continue reading Outlining A Novel
Update: Turning Ideas Into Words
So... This is the sum total of my creativity this week: As such, I have no new content to share this week. What I do have is an update on some re-arranging I have done around here. For the past few months, I have been concentrating on posts dedicated to sharing thoughts and what I… Continue reading Update: Turning Ideas Into Words
World Building: Extraordinary
Now, don’t tell me you’ve gone to all this trouble to make a world that is just the same as ours. Of course not! Right? Even if your fictional world is grounded in our reality, there will be something to set it apart (like a magical subculture – Neverwhere, Harry Potter, Skulduggery Pleasant…) As with… Continue reading World Building: Extraordinary
World Building: Human
Last week, I started looking at world building in fiction. This may seem like an arduous task, but if you are a Sci-Fi/Fantasy writer it is, to some extent, unavoidable. In last week’s post, I looked at the physical world, what will essentially be the foundation of your fictional creation, the places your characters will… Continue reading World Building: Human
World Building: Physical
I am a Sci-Fi/Fantasy writer and as such, world building comes with the territory. Even if the project I am working on is based in the real world, inevitably, there will be at least one element to set it apart. It could be something simple like a mirror that takes you into parallel realities (why… Continue reading World Building: Physical
Gateway Deaths
Let’s talk about death for a moment. Or more specifically fictional character deaths. I do not consider myself to be a blood thirsty writer. I do not decide the fate of my characters by the roll of dice, or the toss of a coin (very few writer’s do, despite what you may think of us).… Continue reading Gateway Deaths
Finding Jaecks
Here’s a true story for you to think about. It concerns a man called Elias Jaecks and the moment that I realised I didn’t know him at all. This revelation struck me after I had worked through the first 70,000 words of my novel and had come to write the first line of Jaecks’ dialogue.… Continue reading Finding Jaecks
Narrative Voices – Part 2
Last week, I started looking at the different kinds of Narrative Voices you can choose from as a writer. As the choices and combinations are quite varied, I decided it would be best to split the discussion into two parts. If you would like to catch up on what was said about Person and Tense,… Continue reading Narrative Voices – Part 2
Narrative Voices – Part 1
Choosing a Narrative Voice for your story can be harder than you might think. Sure, you may naturally gravitate towards writing in the third person, but if a story sounds better coming directly from the mouth of its main character, then that’s how it needs to be written. Sometimes, the choice is obvious, but there… Continue reading Narrative Voices – Part 1