Another gem from the BYU online writers’ course features author and lecturer Brandon Sanderson on character. In this lecture, Sanderson outlines his theory of character in fiction. It’s a remarkably simple and effective formula, from a best-selling genre writer.
…
Think of this as a writer’s cheat sheet: the six essential elements of story.
There are so many ways to define, deconstruct, breakdown and pick apart ‘story‘, but I’ve found Anne Hawley’s six word prompts the most useful.
…
If you’re stifled at the keyboard unable to find your free flow: get up and create.
It’s a common thing with authors and other creative types. You want to create but the creativity won’t flow.
…
From his Free Writing Course online, we bring you Brandon Sanderson’s Three P’s of Plot. Fine advice for the budding author…
…
How many times do you edit and revise, and still wonder how to fix a bad scene in your manuscript. Been there, struggled with that. You don’t always know why it doesn’t work, but that feeling won’t go away. …
I’ve been challenged to write an epic fantasy genre story, so I’m reading a lot of current fantasy fiction. It varies from ‘meh’ to ‘aarrrgghh!’ not only for the quality of the writing, but the vast number of fantasy genre tropes we love and hate.
A trope is any type of figure of speech, theme, image, character, or plot element that is used many times. All genres have them, but the fantasy genre is piled higher than Khazad Dum (too geeky already?).
…
Following up a Writer’s Summit, a few days on from Escape the Plot Forest , I’m still digesting all that material and need to go over some of it again!
…
What’s been stopping you from producing that magnum opus? From the opening of Jurgen Wolff’s 2007 Your Writing Coach, what follows is our take on his Seven Deadly Fears of Writing; those fears that stop would-be, and even some professional writers getting on with the job of writing.
…
Outlining a book? Why not? Sixty, seventy, eighty thousand words or more. That’s your typical novel. Somehow you have to get to there from a blank page. Unless you’re an accomplished free-writer, that’s where an outline can help.
…
Write Good by Frank L. Visco is a set of rules originally published in the June 1986 issue of Writers’ digest.
My several years in the word game have learnt me several rules: …