The Art of War: Writing Army to Army Combat
Heart-pounding, quick-paced, shocking. Every writer wants to hook the reader with high-octane, energetic scenes. The most complicated has to be army to army as there’s a lot happening at once and maintaining the energy gets tricky. I tried once and thought I had aced a spectacular battle.
In the end, I had a cacophony of main characters strewn across the battlefield in separate worlds. It felt empty and dead. Maintaining the epicness of a great war requires engaging the reader in more ways than visuals. There’s more to war than gore.
Weasel Words: The Overused and Undesired Vocabulary
My editor forbids cliches. Why? Because they’re an easy way out of creative writing. The same goes for weasel words. A writer has access to a massive vocabulary, so there’s no reason to say “grass” 400 times in a short story.
I mentioned this topic briefly in my top 10 edits for writers, but the idea came across my mind recently while editing my book. After finishing the novel, I searched for words I knew were problematic or frequent. I have a fairly good self-awareness of which words I overuse, but occasionally they slip through. Got a headache trying to fix my mistakes and it made me realize how weasel words can’t simply be removed; sometimes they need a replacement. So if you’re working on a short story or editing a 100k+ word book, here’s ways to find your weasels and methods for editing them out.
Reasons Why Your Novel Should Marinate
Writing a novel is thrilling. Thoughts become prose, imagination solidified into ink. After the first draft, you stress over edits. What should stay, what should go. What’s missing and what needs to not exist. By the time you finish the final draft, you’re ready to do whatever it takes to see it in the hands of readers.
But sometimes what a book needs most is to sit. And wait. And marinate.
Show not Tell: 3 Simple Tricks for Descriptive Writing
“Show, don’t tell.” The mantra of any good writer, and my nemesis for a long while. 85k words and I didn’t “show enough.” Everyone lived in a “fog” and my descriptions (amongst other things) had to get better. I had to learn the meaning of descriptive writing over time. I realized recently that, like mini me, others struggle with showing rather than telling. Since I’m now known in my critique group for having phenomenal description, I figured a post was due.
Romance Genre: How to Write a Cringeless Love Story
Yuck. That’s usually my response to any romance novel. But that’s only because I have high expectations.
Reality doesn’t have a Chris Hemsworth bumping into a Jennifer Lopez in the grocery store while her ex Jason Mamoa seethes with jealousy in the background. And if that is reality, then it’s really boring. It’s more obvious in movies, but even books have drop-dead gorgeous characters that whine about if the guy likes them and how quickly they can get into bed together. But love doesn’t work that way.
Novel Content: What to Reduce for a Good Book
When I jumped onto social media to build my platform, I came across a lot of self-published writers that I wanted to help. I joined their advance teams and got their books to read and review before they were released to the public. But as I consumed each novel, I found a lot of elements I liked and a lot that I despised. I couldn’t figure out why until recently.
Plant Basics: Pastures and Plant Life for Writing
In my quest to create realistic landscapes on unknown worlds, I found myself deep diving into the basics of farm life. Seems weird (hence why it’s in “random research”), but learning about plant life and how it works in our world offers many insights in how to create exotic plant life with believable ecosystems.
I explored a lot more into plants than I thought humanly possible. And there’s still more to learn. Gonna have posts about other growing methods like hydroponics and a few word lists related to plants and landscapes, but this should help give you a basic idea of how a farm traditionally would operate. I mainly looked into pastures, though found myself digging a little into crops and compost. Hopefully this snippet helps make your story that much more realistic and relatable while the dragons attack.
Fans of Fiction: Why Every Writer Should be a Reader
When I was young, I read all the time. Percy Jackson, School for Good and Evil, Narnia, and more. My life encompassed fictional worlds before I ever wrote a word. From reader to writer, I took my inspirations from fiction and crafted my own worlds, characters, and plots.
Then life happened. Busy with school, work, and the unexpected, I had to choose what to do and what to forego. Reading got knocked down the priority list. My reading time got reduced to art history homework and psychology books. Boring. Writing became difficult and I feared I’d lost my gift.
Troublesome Homonyms: Which to Use and When to Use Them
Every now and then while I’m writing, I come across a word that has two different spellings. The difference is usually one letter, but no matter how many times I use it, I always forget which meaning is the one I want. And writing programs like Word don’t pick it up because it’s spelled correctly. I end up dragging myself out of the writing zone because I can’t get past not knowing if it’s the right word or not. There called homonyms, but I skip labeling and just growl at my inability to discern what’s what.
The Secrets Behind Excellent Mystery Writing
I never celebrated Halloween (don’t be alarmed), but I always loved watching the special episodes on NCIS and other crime shows. The crime and investigation always took a strange turn that left you confused and somewhat weirded out. By the end, everything made sense and all the seeming nonsense tied a nice little bow around the killer or thief. That’s the best part about a mystery; the active search for a guilty party and the twists and turns that leave you guessing as to who the culprit truly is. Which is why this Halloween, I’m deep-diving into the genre of mystery and seeing what it takes to write the next great detective.