Hello, beautiful people on the internet! Welcome back to Worldly Wise where together we’re going to take the reins of your speculative fiction story and see it to the finishing line. Did any of the book recommendations from last time make it to your TBR Pile? If not, but you still want to explore the… Read more »
We’ve all heard that old advice, show, don’t tell. It is often repeated like a complete thought. It encapsulates the idea that showing the reader what’s important through the events of the story is a far more engaging method of storytelling than telling the reader what’s essential. In a work written for commercial markets, the… Read more »
We think of inspiration arriving in a flash, a moment where the rabbit appears from the magic hat as if from nowhere. Those creative lightning strikes hit each of us occasionally. We know we can’t rely on their appearance. But what if we could? Creativity exercises foster conditions that make inspirational lightning strikes more likely…. Read more »
[Author’s note: This is the first article in my new column series about humor writing called “What’s So Funny”. It addresses the so-called how-to’s, different approaches to humor writing, funny people who inspire me, and so on.] Some people are intimidated by writing humor. They think they just aren’t funny enough. And while it isn’t… Read more »
The world is a mess right now. The United States is a mess right now. And we cannot pretend like what has been happening and what’s continuing to happen isn’t happening. And I just wanted to name that here before going any further. Everyone has the right to engage in social justice in different ways,… Read more »
Fear is a very particular and peculiar thing. For some, it can be absolutely debilitating. For others, it can be motivating. And for others still, it can be inspiring. Several weeks ago, I went into the doctor’s office for my first ever MRI at the age of 29, and it was honestly a terrifying experience…. Read more »
When I first started going to therapy in 2013, my therapist took a great deal of notes on my general thoughts and behavior, just to get a sense of me as a person. One of the most important things she found was that I had a pretty wild imagination. And that wildness has played a… Read more »
As I mentioned in my introduction to the ThrillerFest recaps, I fully expected to learn a lot about plot, pacing and suspense. What I did NOT expect was that character development would be the central topic to just about every talk or panel I attended. Character development in a thriller? Actually, that idea is not… Read more »
To wrap up our week-long series about naming characters we’re going to play a game. In the picture below there are two lists of names. Select one name from each list (or even pick two names from the same list.) You can pick names that you think go well together, or if you’d rather leave… Read more »
