The Masquerade Crew

Buffer The following is a guest post by Claire Pickering and Rebecca Richmond at The Writers' House UK. Blog: http://www.writershouse.co.uk/blog Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/WritersHouseUK LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/pub/claire-pickering/25/7a8/200 Follow @thewritershouse

Buffer The following is a guest post by Claire Pickering and Rebecca Richmond at The Writers' House UK. Blog: http://www.writershouse.co.uk/blog Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/WritersHouseUK LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/pub/claire-pickering/25/7a8/200 Follow @thewritershouse

Buffer The following is a guest post by Gina Rossi. Facebook: facebook.com/gina.rossi.7 Pinterest: pinterest.com/ginarossiwriter Follow @Ginagina7

Buffer The following is syndicated from Marny Copal's blog and is posted here with permission. “There is” and “there are” are commonly used in the English language. What some people may not know is that there is a clutter word. It’s indirect and doesn’t convey much meaning other than indicating the existence of something. This leads to another problem: a boring verb.

Buffer The following is syndicated from The Four Part Land and is posted here with permission. In my eyes, what sets fantasy apart from any other setting is magic. How it is handled, the strength, the interactions, but mostly its very existence. Magic is the glue that holds a fantasy setting together, because it reflects the characteristics of the setting and the people within it. Very often this includes the main character. Goodkind, Jordan, Brooks, Rowling, all of them have their primary character(s) wield magic.

Buffer The following is syndicated from Thriller Writer: the website of author Eric J. Gates and is posted here with permission. I’ve spoken to hundreds of people over the course of the years, all of whom had one thing in common. OK, two – they were all frustrated and they all classed themselves as ‘aspiring’ writer. Why aspiring? I would ask. Those of you who read my occasional blogs know that my position on this is either you write or you don’t. I think it was the Bengali philosopher and poet Rabindranath Tagore who said “You can't cross the sea merely by standing and staring at the water.” Their confusion with my posture is that they confuse ‘aspiring writer’ with ‘published writer’ or ‘famous author’. Hey, wake up! While they’ve be lamenting their lack of writing success, the World has moved on. This is a different paradigm. Many of the ‘traditional’ obstacles in ‘Traditional Publishing’ have ‘traditioned’ themselves out of the game.

Buffer By Kelly Martin Follow @martieKay Last November, I decided to participate in my very first NaNoWriMo. Some thought I was crazy (they might have been right), but I did it none-the-less. I ‘won’ NaNo before Thanksgiving much to the happiness of my family and my poor, worn-out fingers.

Buffer By Anthony J. Otten Follow @AnthonyOtten You remember the sacred writing process from grade school. Prewrite. Outline main topics and supporting details. Rough out a draft with intro and closing. And so on. For a first-time writer, these training wheels often prove helpful. But if we later decide to tackle a creative work like a novel, this prepackaged formula may hamper the joy of art rather than stoke it. When we begin a complex piece in the thrill of creation, our first instinct is often to outline each event, each setting, each character – sometimes so obsessively that we strain to foresee what will happen late in our novels before we’ve even written the opening passage. If satisfied, this urge to sketch out everything beforehand usually makes it feel as if you’re writing your book twice.

Buffer With National Novel Writing Month (NaNo) starting in just a few weeks, I thought it would be a good time to run a series of posts about writing, specifically tips that would benefit writers before, during, and after NaNo; thus, tips for writing that first draft.

Buffer We no longer live in the 20th century when authors and readers were separated so much that communication between the two almost never occurred. The line between the two has nearly been eradicated. There is, however, one barrier that still exists. Most of the time a reader can not dictate how a story will progress.

Buffer A lot of writers dread the thought of marketing their book, but in this new age of publishing, all writers need to market their books (unless your name is Stephen King). Whether you're traditionally published, self-published, or somewhere in between in one of the various levels of Indie, you will most likely have to market your book. Otherwise, it will not sell. But how?

Buffer Usually we read the differences between Indie and Traditional Publishing, and there are some very stark differences. But that doesn't mean we as Indies can't learn from the big guys. They do some things right. Otherwise they wouldn't have lasted as long as they have. Perhaps this isn't a revolutionary idea, but it was kind of a brainstorm for me, and I don't think I've read this tip quite expressed like how I'm about to put it.

The Masquerade Crew is about ten or eleven months old (depending on how you're counting the days), and I've learned a lot in this short timeframe. Since part of my goal is to promote authors and their blogs, I tend to visit a lot of them. I've noticed a few trends that make some blogs not as great as they could be. There are a lot of tips about how to turn a fizzling blog into a hurricane, but I'm going to narrow this post down to four tips about your actual blog posts.

The following is syndicated from Lynnette Labelle's blog with permission. Buried or hidden dialogue, both terms mean the same thing, but what is that exactly? Buried dialogue happens when you bury the dialogue between the narratives. The paragraph will look like this: narrative, dialogue, narrative. Still don’t know what I mean? Don’t worry. Some examples are coming up. Keep reading.

That’s a loaded question. I don’t think there is a simple answer, but let me give you my take. When I first heard of the 99¢ ebook, I thought it was a good idea from the reader’s standpoint, but I’m beginning to change my opinion. Not completely though! Let me explain.

I would like to thank everyone who participated in the A to Z Challenge this year and especially those that offered guest posts on our site. There were only two letters that I had problems with: R and W. We had an extra O, so that turned into Repeating "O", and I turned to a crew member to supply the W. All in all, I think we did a great job. I'm listing all of the tips here for those that may have missed one here or there. Also, if you wanted to bookmark the entire series, this would be the page to do it. Remember: visit some of the blogs of our guest posters. Follow them on Twitter (if listed). That's what guest posting and networking are all about.

Post by Guest Blogger Donna B. McNicol We're writers. We often have a love hate relationship with blogs. We put words together to create something with meaning, something we hope others will want to read. That means we sometimes take ourselves too seriously. We write about our books. We write about others books. We write about writing. We write about others writing. We report news of interest to writers. We interview authors. We write about interviewing authors. Oh, and sometimes we even write stories/articles/poems.

Common Errors Writers Make Post by Guest Blogger Elizabeth C. The most common mistake I see writers making is substituting one homonym for another. English is full of pairs of words (sometimes three or even, very rarely, four words) that sound the same but have different meanings. The most common set is two, too, and to (meaning a pair, also, and towards).

Post by Guest Blogger Ian Roberts Xylophones—simple instruments that parents dread their children getting but can't resist trying for themselves—bear comparison with the process of plotting, characterising and writing a book. All of these require a willingness to release the inner child's curiosity and risk making something interesting from it. Whether the way you write is carefully planned or not—and I've tried both approaches—researching a possible framework provides an instrument and the keys to what might become a story.

A Novelist's Nightmare Written by Charlotte Parr Don't you just hate that fuzzy feeling you get with writer's block? The feeling like you're scrambling around in your brain for ideas but your fingers touch nothing but soft fluffy nothingness. Me too. There are loads of ways people tell me how to get rid of writer's block. Some of them make sense; others are just stupid. Here are my ways for getting rid of writer's block. Try them and see if they work for you!