Many writers have a large notebook or digital file affectionately called their "Writing Bible". It contains everything they need to remember—details about their characters, plotting, locations, fictional races, ancient history, research—you get the idea. I've always been one of those writers who puts it down by hand in an A4 notebook with a rainbow of… Continue reading Make a Private Wikia for Your Novel!
I always appreciated—and what I appreciate even more now, in the wake of dozens of post-apocalyptic series that didn’t work nearly as well—was that the camera always kept its eye firmly turned toward the people, not the ruins. -- Todd VanDerWerff I read that quote a while back at the very bottom of an article… Continue reading Building strong narratives in the post-apocalyptic genre
Writing a novel or a short story is challenging at the best of times. There's plot holes to consider, bathrooms to be cleaned, food to be eaten and, sometimes, motivation to be found. I've been writing novels for the past seven years and yet I still suffer from chronic procrastination. When my Deadline disappears I… Continue reading 6 Ways for Writers to Procrastinate and Still be Productive!
"Dive right in!" they said. "It'll be fun!" they said. I'm talking about the word-cannon of inspiration. Getting to know your characters. If you've done much writing in your life before, you'll know that starting anything can be one of the hardest things. NaNoWriMo is no exception. It's… Continue reading NaNoWriMo Prep: THREE ways to load your characters into the NaNo-launch-day cannon
Because I don't already have enough to do, I thought I'd host a contest for Final Fantasy fan-fic writers. I love to see fans hard at work fangasming with creativity, and I love to make GMVs, which I haven't been making enough of lately. So, I thought I'd combine the two. How would you like… Continue reading Final Fantasy Flash-Fan-Fiction Contest
"We are dealing with sex. We're going to be embarrassed and everything will have a double meaning. We're not even going to try and rise above it." -- Sara Bailey Sex is both blushing difficult to write and wonderfully simple. There is a larger market for erotica fiction than you might think, too, so it… Continue reading A quick guide to the basics of writing erotica
A few weeks ago I explained how important it is to know the formula of writing a review – particularly when the review is to help other writers improve. This week I'm going to be a little more detailed and give a tip on how to style your review. Style is, of course, not quite… Continue reading Writing Reviews [part 2]: Tips & Examples
NOTE: There is a hyphen between every paragraph because wordpress keeps trying to delete the breaks. Sorry! I recently joined a site designed to help writers improve. It works on the basis that for every review you give, you get one in return. The more popular your work gets the higher up 'the list' it… Continue reading How to write critical reviews; a skill every writer should learn.
Script in Performance, taught by the international playwright Seamus Finnegan, brought to you by Duck-Face-the-Unknown (a.k.a. Willow). A new term has begun and my new favourite (legally attended) class, is Script in Performance. The professor of this class, Seamus, is an Irish jem, and I feel privileged to be taught by someone so hilarious, artistic,… Continue reading How to build a character and, possibly, a novel plot in 10 minutes.
Willow H. Wood 