Tag Archives: creative writing

Five Questions to Help You Create a Fictional Culture

Posted in Writings about Writing by

If you’re a fantasy or sci-fi writer, then you’ve probably tried your hand at creating fantastic creatures and aliens of all sorts. But inventing convincing aliens or fairy-tale creatures involves more than just coming up with cool looks or inhuman superpowers. If all you need for your story is just a scary monster or creepy creature, that’s fine – but if you want an actual alien race or people-group for a fantasy world, then you need more than just the basics of creature traits.

Here are five questions that you can ask yourself as you’re inventing people, cultures, races, and creatures for your fantasy/sci-fi stories. Continue reading →

What to Do When You Finish a First Draft

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So this post isn’t actually so much of a how-to as the title might imply (sorry). It’s actually more of a “what I am going to do next now that I’ve finished a first draft of a novel.” If you can glean any helpful tips from this, please do – if not, then just stay tuned and I’ll put up a more useful how-to-write-better post at some point in the future.

The other night I finished the first draft of the historical fiction that I’ve been working on since last summer. This is a record for me: a full (albeit shorter than normal for me) novel draft finished in less than a year. So here are my next steps for the process:

Step 1: Celebrate. I finished writing an entire book. I created people out of my head, and gave them life for 60,000+ words. And I also gave life to a real person of the past and recreated a piece of history, because this book is historical fiction. Continue reading →

Four Things

Posted in Music, Movies, and other Muses by

This week I’m stealing my blog topic from my friend Jessica over at Chronically Vintage. She’s a lovely person and blogs about vintage fashion, which is something I knew little about until I started writing historical fiction.

Anyway, the idea of this post is to not talk about writerly stuff per se, but rather to reveal some slightly more personal things about me. So here we go – four things about me: Continue reading →

10 Great Writerly Quotes

Posted in Music, Movies, and other Muses, Writings about Writing by

I’ve done a post about quotes for writing and inspiration, but I’ve been collecting more writerly quotes, so I thought I’d share. Who doesn’t love a great quote about books, storytelling, and the passion we feel for the written word? Enjoy!

“A writer is somebody for whom writing is more difficult than it is for other people.” Thomas Mann

“I love studying folklore and legends. The stories that people passed down for a thousand years without any sort of marketing support are obviously saying something appealing about the basic human condition.” Ti Schafer Continue reading →

The Creativity of Autumn

Posted in Music, Movies, and other Muses by

I love fall. As much as I love winter, I think autumn is probably my favorite season. I love the colors, the crisp air, finally getting to wear hoodies and boots. The dramatic change of the season energizes me with a promise of new and better things to come. I’m always inspired by the outdoors and nature, but autumn for me is the most inspiring of all. Continue reading →