Three Items Writers Hate to Write

Story Empire

Hi, SEers! Mae here with you today. Thanks for joining me as I ruminate over three items writers hate to write. Seems odd, doesn’t it?

Most of the time, we love to put pen to paper (or fingers to keyboard) and let inspiration fly. But, if you’re like me, there are several writing tasks that make you groan. Let’s take a quick look at each.

THE SYNOPSIS
I love writing the synopsis for my novel—said no author ever.

Well, maybe that’s too harsh. Some authors write the synopsis before the manuscript, so they know exactly what journey their characters are going to take. Not me. For most of us, writing a synopsis after completing a 50K-90K novel is sheer torture. I’ll be the first to raise my hand and admit the mere thought gives me a pounding headache. To make it easier, I keep the following in mind:

Each…

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Blogger’s Books: Jeanne Owens

Thank you so much for featuring me and my book today, Pete 😁

beetleypete

Today I am featuring the latest book from North American writer, Jeanne Owens.
https://jeanneowens.weebly.com/

This is Jeanne’s description and synopsis. As you can see, it is the second book in a series.

Chronicles of Riss
Book 2 of Adventures in Sorcery

Confronting evil sorcerers. Fighting monsters. Dueling metal golems. Searching for a sea monster. Hunting lost treasure. Finding a missing show dog. Competing in talent contests. Helping lost children. These are just some of the widely varied exploits that the young mercenary sorceress Marissa “Riss” Cobalt shares in this second Adventures in Sorcery book. Riss reveals how she ended up as a mercenary and chronicles some of the many adventures, ranging from fun to serious, that she’s had prior to the events of Kismet and Tell.

I consider it as a YA Fantasy and is a collection of fun, light-hearted short stories.

If this is the kind of genre that…

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What Is the Oldest English Word?

Nicholas C. Rossis

Someone asked this on Quora and Oscar Tay gave a fascinating answer.

The oldest recorded word In English is Gægogæ mægæ medu.

The Undley Bracteate

In 1982, a farmer in Undley Common, Suffolk, England, was walking across his field when he came across a fantastic bit of history: The Undley Bracteate, an Anglo-Saxon medallion dating to 450 AD. It was small, no bigger than a penny, and inscribed with the image of two babies – presumably Romulus and Remus – suckling from a wolf.

The Undley Bracteate is believed to be made in or near southern Denmark. It may have been brought to England by some of the earliest Germanic-speaking settlers. Image: the British Museum.

Gægogæ mægæ medu

The find itself would be interesting enough, but look carefully at that inscription around the edges. It’s not just a random pattern: in Runes, it says ᚷ‍ᚫᚷ‍ᚩᚷ‍ᚫ ᛗᚫᚷᚫ ᛗᛖᛞᚢ, gægogæ…

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Writers, ever had this feeling? Vladimir Nabokov QUOTES FOR WRITERS

BRIDGET WHELAN writer

The pages are still blank, but there is a miraculous feeling of the words being there, written in invisible ink and clamoring to become visible.

Vladimir Nabokov

Picture credit: Image by Dariusz Sankowski from Pixabay

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The Biggest Writing Craft Issue New Novelists Face, and 7 Ways to Avoid It. – by Anne R. Allen…

Chris The Story Reading Ape's Blog

We all have a writing craft issue or two…or three or four or five, no matter where we are in our careers. Yes, even professional authors who have written ten or more novels. I’m wrestling with some myself with my forthcoming Camilla book, Catfishing in America, which is still, alas, only half way there. It’s at that stage that Melodie Campbell called the “Chaos Point” in her wonderful post for us “My Novel is a Mess.”

Thing is—creating compelling narrative takes more than great characters, sparkling dialogue and exciting action.  All those elements have to come together in one story.

One story.

Continue reading HERE

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Dialogue Tags and You

Story Empire

Hello SEers. It’s John with you again, and today we are going to discuss dialogue tags.

Photo from Pixabay

Hold on. Before you run off or decide to take a nap give me a moment to introduce the subject.

Photo by Pixabay

We all know dialogue tags are intended to make it very clear who is doing the talking. Especially if there are more than two people involved.

Photo by Pixabay

Many authors also use dialogue tags for emotions or other indications about how the words are delivered. There is nothing wrong with this but the chance of overdoing it to a point of complicating the action and confusing the reader is always present.

Photo by Pixabay

So, what do I want to accomplish today? My objective is simple. I want to cause a little thought about dialogue tags. “Yes, the person with the raised hand. You have a question?” “Why…

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Ten Rules of Time Travel by Ian Lehey

No Wasted Ink

So you wish to include time traveling as part of your story? How hard can it be? Have a nutty scientist or brainy professor come up with a credible time machine, or stumble across one if you want to avoid some of the techy mumbo-jumbo, have them jump backwards or forwards to the time requested by the plot, and then, for the perfect Hollywood ending, everyone jumps back to their timeline and enjoys the cool effects of tweaking history.

Problems deriving from time-travel? There’s nothing so terrible about becoming your own father or mother (or both) that can’t be fixed with some counseling and some good parenting. (I think Douglas Adams said that.) It’s just like wiping a page from a history book and writing it again the way you want it to be, right?

Wrong.

The truth is that when it comes to time travel, the territory becomes rather…

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Aristotle Gave Us More than Philosophy

Story Empire

Ciao, SEers. Have you ever heard the term polymath? I had to dig deep into my college days to remember the definition. (We won’t discuss how long ago that was.)

A polymath is a person with knowledge in a wide range of topics. Polymaths go far beyond the Jack-of-all-trades-master-of-none level of understanding and experience. These are experts in multiple fields. We often think of the Renaissance when we think of polymaths, Leonardo DaVinci being among the most famous. But there have been several throughout history. And Aristotle was one of them.

We tend to think of him as a philosopher. But among his many fields of expertise were arts, sciences, economics, politics, and metaphysics.

As this is a writing site, we’re going to talk about Aristotle’s contributions to literature. Not his work itself, but his defining of the terms comedy and tragedy.

Aristotelian Comedy
In an Aristotelian comedy, the…

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What To Do When You Need Writing Motivation – by Melissa Donovan…

Chris The Story Reading Ape's Blog

on Writing Forward:

The more inspired you feel, the more motivated you will be to write. But there’s a subtle difference between feeling inspired and being motivated. Inspiration is about ideas; motivation is about doing the work. You could lounge around for hours, daydreaming poems and stories—without ever putting a single word on paper.

Continue reading HERE

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Tips For When Inspiration Isn’t Striking

mythoughtsonwritingandreading

I find it ironic that I’m writing this blog post at a time when I’m having severe writer’s block. But maybe this is what I need and what some of you might need as well. It’s hard to write when you don’t know what to write about. It’s hard to write when your imaginary friends have decided to go on vacation and didn’t give you any warning. And it’s hard to write in emotional times (although you would think those would be the easiest times to write, they aren’t).

So to try and get my inspiration back, that’s what this post is for! Plus I thought it would be helpful for anyone else who isn’t feeling inspired as of late. So here are some tips to help us get our inspiration back!

1. Writing prompts: Not going to lie, I’m not the biggest fan of writing prompts. Some writing prompts…

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