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How To Write A Classic
War and Peace. Les Miserables. The Count of Monte Cristo. The Three Musketeers. Hamlet. The Last of the Mohicans. All of these are classics, written in bygone ages for the people of bygone ages,...
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Short Story: A Good Word
This is a short story I’ve had simmering within me for a while. I wrote most of the first half about a month ago, but I had the wrong main character. Yesterday, I reworked it so it would be more...
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Yay!
Because people stopped giving me blog awards for some reason, I have decided to add my post to the Notebook Sisters’ thingamajig that they’re hosting over on their blog– their “Pass the Parcel” game....
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Kmalmor the Great and Mighty Dark Enchantress
Katniss. Kira. Karou. The Hunger Games, Partials, and Daughter of Smoke and Bone. What do they have in common? For one thing, they’re some of the strongest heroines I’ve ever encountered in YA...
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Mini Reviews
Today I am going to review three books: I Am Not A Serial Killer by Dan Wells, The Familiars by Adam Jay Epstein and Andrew Jacobson, and Calico Joe by John Grisham. Since these are mini reviews, each...
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Eye Transplants
There are lots of tips on editing novel manuscripts– stronger descriptions, better characters, cooler names– but they always tell you the same thing: Come back to the story with new eyes. Hello, is...
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Don’t Pick Noses
Some people have noses. Some don’t. You can’t hold it against someone that their face was in the wrong place at the wrong time, or that they were born with a defect (or reborn, as the case may be)....
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Here I Come To Save The Day!
Deus ex machina is Latin for “God from the machine”. It’s a literary term for when all hope seems lost and KABLAMMO! everything is saved. That has to be the only paragraph in history with both a Latin...
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Here’s My Stop!
Dustfinger, from Inkheart, is very complicated. The Book Chewers just published a guest post about him that I wrote, so you can read all about him there. The main discovery I made in that post,...
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I Can’t Hear You!
Can you hear what I’m thinking? I doubt it. Even if you could, your brain would be steaming right now, trying to process the double time paradox I was just concocting. (Even I don’t try to process...
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Changing Characters… Again
I like reading about thieves. I enjoy all their faults: their conceit, their disregard for personal property, and their general dishonesty. Though there are other things that make me like such...
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What A Coincidence!
Your main character is walking down the street. “Hey,” he says to himself, “this walking business is tiring and inefficient. I really need to get to the villain’s secret headquarters, and this sign...
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Know Thy Villain
Villains! An-tag-on-ists! Boil ‘em, mash ‘em, stick ‘em in a stew. Lovely big enemies who thwart the hero at every turn. Even literary fiction writers couldn’t say no to that. Every story needs...
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Mistborn, a Review
This is a spoiler-free review for Mistborn, by Brandon Sanderson. As a dedicated follower of the Writing Excuses podcast, there was only so much about Brandon Sanderson’s books that I could hear before...
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I Am Heartily Ashamed Of Myself
Do you think this blog is helpful? I do, under a certain set of conditions. It helps me a lot. You have no idea what you never knew until you write a thousand words about it. If it helps others in...
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Mini Reviews– Dystopian Edition!
Ta-da! On this installment of Mini Reviews, two out of three of the books we will cover are dystopian– therefore, we have a dystopian edition! To recap: these are miniature book reviews, simple as...
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Phil Phorce: In Which Steve Says Something Useful
The Phil Phorce is a fictional periodical featuring my favorite characters from my own writing. It comes out in episodes, once every three months or so. To find out more and to read previous...
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The Science of Thrillers
A week ago, I would have denied liking thrillers. I never read or watched any thrillers. They were foreign to me; repulsive, even. I dislike scaring myself on purpose. I don’t find a thrill in...
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The Easy Victory
At the end of Episode Three of the Phil Phorce story, I made a rather large mistake. In the latter half of the episode, the group of main characters infiltrated a party to which they were not exactly...
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Phil Phorce: The Commercial
The Phil Phorce is a fictional periodical featuring my favorite characters from my own writing. It comes out in episodes, once every three months or so. To find out more and to read previous...
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