I recently rewatched the latest Cinderella. If there was one take away the writer (Chris Weitz) or director (Kenneth Branagh) left us with; the one projection he stamped the world with was this: Have courage and be kind.
A universal truth, a beautiful and powerful way of life. A phrase easily remembered and jotted down; a quote shared and mused over. Continue reading
Writers are a special breed of human. To help your writer grow, please put them
immediately in (large or small, mainly clean) pens with other writers. (i.e. writers partners
or groups, conferences, book fests, libraries.) Give them hours talking about imaginary scenarios and people and places.
They’ll need some kind food and drink. Coffee and tea have been proven to stimulate growth in
terms of word count and their behavior will stabilize enough to focus on plot. Feed them books regularly. If you find they like a certain kind, add more to the diet.
In this continuation about world building, I wanted to focus in on a few specifics, as well as the ways in which getting down to the details can actually lead you into a deeper story – both for the sake of your readers’ experience ,and how it can affect your plot, character development So here’s a few suggestions, just to get your imagination rolling. Continue reading
SP: Can you tell us a bit of who you are and when you started writing?
Sure! My name is Tessa, and I started writing since before I could hardly hold a pencil. =) I was three-years-old when I began to dictate stories to my mom. Any time I was bored throughout my childhood, I would sit down at the dining room table with a stack of blank paper and crayons, and write story after story. I fell in love with the thrill of becoming another person all through the power of a pen. Continue reading
What comes to mind when you think about the editing process? If the mere word “Editing” makes you want to hide under your comforters, or find a boat and sail off the face of the earth, I understand. Or maybe you’re a super planner and love the editing process and have all sorts of handy excel charts mapping your progress.
No matter what your feelings are regarding the editing process, there are tools and tips that can help.
Continue reading
It’s early morning and snow is falling fast and wet outside the warehouse windows. Apart from the whoosh of the occasional car and the steady hum of the ventilation, it is quiet as the green coffee beans wait in burlap sacks for the roaster. She arrives in a wet beanie, cursing cheerfully at Mondays and the weather, and the dusty smell of husks and paper is overtaken by something sweeter curling up through the stale air—the bloom of coffee roasting.* Continue reading
Pen Friends – Welcome Andrew Peterson! Come hear his take on writing, world building, and his journey in creating his epic series, The Wingfeather Saga, (which we cannot recommend enough).
SP: Can you tell us a bit of who you are and when you started writing?
Hello! I’m a father and a husband from Nashville. I started writing books about ten years ago, but as a touring singer/songwriter for about twenty years, stories have long been at the center of what I do. Ever since I was a kid I was into movies and music and drawing and books, and for a whole bunch of reasons my guitar was the horse that finally bore me out of town. I moved to Nashville right after college, signed a record deal, and have been doing music ever since. But the kinds of songs I love, and the kind I try to write, have always been the kind that have stories at their heart, partly because I’m a big reader, have always loved books, and never abandoned the dream of someday writing novels. About ten years ago, after reading the Narnia books to my kids, I decided it was time to stop messing around. Continue reading
If you’re anything like me, then you’ll know that the closer you get to a story the harder it is to objectively question it. You’ve spent so much time there and it works so well in your brain that it’s hard to take that mental step back and look for problems.
I’ve already talked about the importance of stress testing a world (see my first article on world building) but we haven’t covered the best ways to start questioning your world and finding the breaking points. Continue reading
Is it a life form? Is it a flower? Is it a piece of art?
Following up from Wesley’s great post, we’re continuing our look at world building!
World building can be intimidating and overwhelming, but no one should ever be discouraged from attempting to build a world for their story.
You already have a huge natural advantage when it comes to world building because you actually LIVE in a WORLD! And it’s full of examples and good ideas you can steal for your own story. Continue reading
The Spinning Pen 