Tag: writing tips
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Fantasy World-Building Fundamentals
A few weeks ago, I broke down some of the major trends in fantasy that might affect what elements of world-building a writer might want to focus on to ensure they had the details they needed to create an immersive world. (See: The 3 Tiers of Fantasy World-Building.) However, that was a general overview based off…
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Writing Resources for Fantasy Authors
While I was working on my current project–which is a high fantasy piece–there were a lot of resources I found myself pulling from in order to make the story as realistic, consistent, and good as possible. It seemed like a good idea to me to put all, or at least the most important, of those…
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Choosing the Opacity of Your World-Building
Among the multitude of differences that separate the practice of reading from the art of writing, especially when it comes to the fantasy/science fiction genres, one of the hardest to reconcile is that of world-building. For a reader, the setting cannot take center stage. Even for someone like me, who loves to explore new settings…
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Knowing When to Quit
Today’s blog post is going to be a little different from what I usually do in my final post of the month. However, I came to a decision a month or two ago regarding a specific writing project of mine. That is, I decided to stop working on it for the time being, and focus…
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A Web of Stories
In previous blog posts, I’ve discussed how you can use characters to generate plot. Naturally, you can also use known plot points to determine essential character traits that will need to be incorporated. If you know there will be a scene where your character will have to decide to trust someone, then, until that point,…
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Turning Characters Into Plot
So we are one week into NaNoWriMo, and I hope things are going well for all of the participants. But, if things are already starting to slow, I thought I’d spend a few minutes today talking about how to decide where to send your plot. A story’s plot is one of those things where you…
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NaNoWriMo 2019: Setting
It starts next week, guys. The big 50k challenge is right around the corner. I hope at this point that you have a pretty good grasp on your project, whatever it is. But if you’re otherwise finished with plotting and characters, then take advantage of the last week of prepping to flesh out your world…
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NaNoWriMo 2019: Characters
I’m maybe over halfway done with my plotting at this point, and it’s honestly such a good thing that I’m getting a feel for my characters in the process. I don’t think I’d otherwise have had much time to sit down and get to know them all personally before November strikes. We’re already halfway through…
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NaNoWriMo 2019: Story Planning
A little less than a week ago, I made myself sit down and think about what it was I wanted to do for this year’s NaNoWriMo challenge. There were a few different options. One: I could use it as an opportunity to explore another major story that is happening in the world of my main…
Katie Bachelder 