As a writer, “style” is a thing we’re supposed to find. It will define us, they say; set us apart as a distinct, creative voice in a vast field of creative voices. It’s our brand. It’s the thing—our “signature”—that marks each of our stories or novels as uniquely ours no matter how different in subject matter [...]
Category > Basics
Fight Scenes That Sizzle
I write violent fiction. As a kid, I loved action movies and heroic fighting fantasy novels. I read The Iliad and The Odyssey when I was eleven and told my mom I preferred The Iliad because of the fight scenes. To this day, when I sit down to watch a movie, I will always [...]
Scene-stealing Antagonists
Merriam Webster defines an antagonist as, “one that contends with or opposes another,” and lists “adversary” and “opponent” as synonyms. Oxford defines the term as, “a person who actively opposes or is hostile to someone or something; an adversary.” Of course in a literary context, an antagonist doesn’t have to be a person. I recall learning in [...]
Sh*t from Shinola
If you’re like me, you spent most of Monday watching Hurricane Sandy pummel the east coast. Every image of flooded streets or burning power lines emblazoned itself into your retinas. The problem was, not all those pictures were real. The one above, for example, combined a photo of New York’s harbor with a storm [...]
Fire it up! A writing exercise
Last week, Christie talked about using timed writing exercises to restart your creative fires. Here’s a similar exercise that you can use to jolt yourself out of a rut. It’s based on Kerouac’s Spontaneous Prose method. You may have tried something similar in a writing class–I know I have. Find an object to study. Maybe [...]
Sometimes We Need a Kick in the Butt
As new writers, the number one piece of advice we hear is to get your butt in chair and keep it there. Great advice, but what if we get our butt in the chair, but the words don’t want to come? There’s nothing more frustrating than fighting to get the words down. If you’re like [...]
Why Write Short Stories?
At the 2011 World Horror Convention, I went to a panel called Why We Write Short Stories. When people used to talk about being a short form or long form writer, I had no idea where I fell into those categories or if I had a preference or the skills for one or the other. [...]
Write-Brain Exercises
I spent the last two weeks with sixteen other writers under the tutelage of Walter Jon Williams and Nancy Kress at the Taos Toolbox workshop. I probably should’ve planned ahead to have my Inkpunks post ready for today before I left. Alas, I did not have that foresight. At the moment I’m a little (make [...]
Add a little … character
I bet if you asked people to tell what their favorite books are and why they enjoy them, most people would mention something about loving the characters. For example, I love the Harry Potter books because I adore Snape. When I was waiting impatiently for the seventh Harry Potter novel, I wasn’t wondering what nefarious [...]
Flash Fiction Friday: Pacing
The best insight comes when you least expect it. I was in Toronto a couple weekends ago, at Ad Astra. I sat in a room on Sunday afternoon with twenty other writers, staring at a piece of flash fiction I wrote for their annual writing contest. I hadn’t won, and while I waited to talk [...]
