The Masquerade Crew

A guest post by Donan Berg Walter Hunt’s repeating rifle replaced the single-shot musket. While it became a model for the Winchester lever-action rifle said to have won the American West, word repetition has never single-handedly enhanced fiction writing and can figuratively “kill” sales, if one visualizes a hand tossing aside a boring book unread. Stand on a United States urban street corner today and you may hear: “Stop quacking about it!” The root-word “Quack” is slang meaning: “to talk rubbish” or “drive a point home unnecessarily.”

A guest post by Heaven O'Shey In the literary world, the plot is the sequence of events of the story. When mapping out your story, you should have an idea of the direction in which you want to take the reader. Your story should entice the reader to keep reading and having a well-thought out plot will accomplish this goal.

How an Annoying Task Can Save Your Butt Many Times Over A guest post by Glen Robinson I once told a writing student that: “Writing is easy. You just have to know where to start, where to stop, and what to put in between.” In essence, what I was talking about was the outline. Now I can already hear many of you groaning, thinking back to your junior high days when you had to learn to diagram a sentence as well as learn to outline in preparation for writing essays. Those outlines were pretty highly structured, with Capital A, followed by #1, followed by lower case a, etc. under each section and subsection. The outline I am going to talk to you about is a little more free flowing, but the purpose is basically the same.

Reflections on Novels and Novelty A guest post by Bill Throwsnaill When I started working on my first novel (Hemlock and the Wizard Tower), I had just stopped reading a particularly disappointing fantasy novel. A sudden and unexpected sense of pride built in my chest, and I proclaimed to myself that I could do better. Another inner voice responded. "Prove it!" And so my adventures as an indie novelist began.

A guest post by LJ Cohen If there's one phrase that every writer has heard ad nauseum, it's "show, don't tell." When I first came across that advice, I understood it in a very narrow context: that I had to describe every aspect of scene, character, and plot, avoiding the use of any sort of exposition. Eventually, I realized that doing so would result in a very tedious, overwritten story. A more nuanced view of "show, don't tell," is in making sure that the story's language conveys emotion and action without the writer telegraphing it or summarizing it for the reader.

Creating a Believable Sense of Place A guest post by Luke Wortley I once attended a lecture on a graduate school visit that centered on place as a veritable character. This got me thinking…how in the world does “place” become a character? My B.A. is in Spanish and so I got to thinking that it could have something to do with language. After all, characters become people by speaking to each other, right? Why could language not transcend the conventional barriers of being able to “speak”?

Involving Kids in Book Writing & Promotion A guest post by Henry Herz Nimpentoad is the fantasy story of a courageous and resourceful little Nibling who leads his tribe through the perilous Grunwald forest, overcoming obstacles and encountering strange creatures along the way. This post is about the creative journey of Nimpentoad by a father and his two young sons. When my sons were five and seven years old, I wanted to share my love of fantasy with them. They were too young for watching most of the fantasy and sci-fi movie classics, and there are only so many good fantasy books available for that age range. Struck by inspiration one day, I came up with a way to share the joy of entering the magical realms of fantasy. I would write a fantasy book for them!

How much is too much? A guest post by Vijaya Schartz Jargon is a fact of life. We use it without noticing because it’s convenient. then after much abuse it gradually becomes part of the everyday vocabulary and finally enters the most prestigious editions of the OXFORD ENGLISH DICTIONARY and the AMERICAN HERITAGE DICTIONARY, to name only two on my shelf.

A guest post by Leigh M. Lane While irony has a place in many genres, it is a fundamental element in satire. When properly used, it can enrich and add necessary depth to a work, offering commentary in ways that few other literary elements can present. Irony expounds a premise through that which is not said, but rather implied by exclusion, creating a deconstructionist venue that might show more than simple description might tell. With that in mind, I offer the reader an exposition of irony through a close reading of a couple of choice excerpts from my dramatic satire and dystopia, World-Mart .

A guest post by Stacey James Obviously this is not a blog about fishing. But you are, in essence, “fishing” for readers. That is, you will want to use the correct kind of “bait” to “lure” your readers into reading the rest of your “tale”.

A guest post by Rob Blackwell Aside from a book’s title and cover, its genre is the most important factor in how it is marketed to and discovered by readers. Of course I never considered this when I wrote my novel. When I started A Soul to Steal, I thought I was writing a horror novel. That’s about as much thought as I put into it. I never considered that horror meant different things to different people. I was quite comfortable being in the same category as Stephen King, my literary hero, and that’s all there was to it. This was a mistake, one I didn’t realize until I had actually published the book. Looking back, I had unnecessarily pigeon-holed my book, sticking it in a category that it belonged in, but also limiting its reach and marketability at the same time. Here’s why:

F is for Figurative: Show, Don’t Tell A guest post by Susie Kline As writers, we are told over and over again that we need to show, not tell our story. That can get confusing! Sometimes, a green tree is just a green tree, right? Wrong! Fiction writing is our time to tell a tale. We want to engage and entertain our readers. We want them to remember our story, long after the words have been read. We need that green tree to be oh so much more!

E is for Editing: 5 Tips for Self-Editing A guest post by Natalie Wright Whether we submit our manuscripts to agents and editors, or take them directly to readers by self-publishing, writers need to be ruthless self-editors. Editing is just as much a part of writing as that initial burst of creative energy. Before you query that manuscript or hit the upload button to self-publish, try out these five editing tips to improve your manuscript:

Chat Me Up: Using Dialogue to Move the Story Forward A guest post by Chris Redding Dialogue in a story performs several functions in a story including showing us character. Your dialogue needs to seem natural and it needs to move the story forward. Your dialogue needs to have the elements of the story including conflict. Dialogue passages are not random. They serve a purpose. They have a beginning, middle and end.

A guest post by Meagan Adele Lopez Whether you’re studying classic acting techniques by Meisner, Stanislovsky, Adler or Commedia Dell’Arte, you will be observing human interaction, movement and habits. You don’t need to know the specifics of each of these teachings to understand that in order to realistically and believably act as another person, you must first have a basic understanding of how humans engage. Human engagement can be anything: the way a person holds his/her coffee cup a body posture shift that happens when he/she is getting hit on tension that arises when there is danger around the way two people shake hands

A guest post by Derek Thompson Over the years I've heard many writers talk about the difficulty in coming up with ideas. I even attended a writing workshop once, where, during the introductions, someone declared, "Someday I really want to write a book - I just don't have any ideas for it yet." And then I really wanted to murder a wannabe writer - only I had plenty of ideas of how to go about it. But enough about me...

The Reviled Adverb & Less-Maligned Adjective A Little Guidance on Description A guest post by Wodke Hawkinson Stephen King's aversion to adverbs is well-known. You can find this quote attributed to Mr. King all over the internet: "The road to Hell is paved with adverbs." But what is an adverb? Technically, it's a modifier. It's a word that describes a verb, a phrase, an adjective, or even another adverb. It's often created by adding -ly or -ally to a regular innocent word, a word that without the -ly would hardly offend anyone. Even Mr. King.

We signed up to participate in the A to Z Challenge in April. One of the major goals of the challenge is to help promote other blogs (as well as yourself). In doing so, participants get to mingle with other bloggers, which sounds like a great way to network. Expanding our personal reach online is a great start, but being able to help writers do the same is even a better goal. The challenge calls for 26 blog posts in 26 days, each day starting with a different letter of the alphabet. This is a major undertaking for anyone, but for writers who maintain blogs, this could be a monumental task. So for that reason, we’re extending an invitation to our writer fans to write guest posts for us.

A repost of THIS ARTICLE (via Cendrine Marrouat ) Before the release of your eBook The day of the release and afterwards One of the most common questions authors ask me is this: “How can I promote my upcoming self-published eBook efficiently and without breaking open my piggy bank?” In this article, I have highlighted more than 30 tips that will…

In the first part of this series, we presented five tips to help you develop characters. The following are the remaining five general tips from the crew.