I’ve been going to writing workshops since 2004, and at this point it’s pretty rare for me to hear of a tool I haven’t heard of before. That doesn’t mean I don’t need to be reminded, and often! I love being reminded, because frankly there are just so many tools and I’m too new at […]
Category > Writing
High Fiber Serials
I’ve been to a lot of conventions and conferences in the last three years and I thought I would dig through my notes for my next Inkpunks blog topic. As I expected, I found a wealth of knowledge, if only I could read my scribbles and remember what they meant! I did find some coherent […]
Putting the Science in Zombie Apocalypse
Kristi is an aspiring sci-fi and fantasy writer from Vancouver who also happens to be a scientist. She has a Ph.D. in Zoology from the University of British Columbia and a M.Sc. and B.Sc. in Molecular Biology and Biochemistry from Simon Fraser University. Her areas of expertise are cell biology, genetics and molecular biology. Besides […]
Guest Post: Doing Research at the Library, Part II. By John Klima.
John Klima previously worked at Asimov’s, Analog, and Tor Books before returning to school to earn his Master’s in Library and Information Science. He now works full time as a librarian. When he is not conquering the world of indexing, John edits and publishes the Hugo Award-winning genre zine Electric Velocipede. The magazine has is […]
Capturing the Essence: Gesture Drawing for Writers
Not too long ago, I took an informal class on the art of storyboarding. (I say informal because my buddy was going to be teaching an online class and he needed some guinea pi-, er, volunteers to help him on the trial run.) I learned a hell of a lot about the underlying principles of […]
Serious Thoughts for Serious People
I’d like to thank Sam Sykes for taking time out of his busy life of writing, pillaging and plunging the entire internet into painful bouts of laughter, to do this guest post for us. Who is Sam? Sam Sykes is the author of The Aeons’ Gate trilogy, a vast and sprawling story of adventure, demons, […]
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 […]
Why do we write?
Lately I’ve been thinking a lot about why I write, or why I started writing in the first place, because over time, these two concepts may diverge. An insidious thing can happen: you can lose sight of what you love about the act, and get caught up in the business of writing: wanting to make […]
First Person POV and Developing Other Characters
I’ve been busy reworking my novel. A YA science fiction romp where a couple things blow up. It’s written in first person present tense, in dialect, and there are a lot of strengths and weaknesses to that POV. One major strength is that readers get to know my main character incredibly well. But the flipside […]
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 […]
