LoryRhythm

7 Tips for Writing Fantasy Anybody Can Write a Novel 2.0   Chapter 2 “Genres” – Section 3 “Fantasy” (Previous Tutorial)              (Next Tutorial) “Fantasy is hardly an escape from reality. It's a way of understanding it.” -Lloyd Alexander My editor tells me that I have a magical super-power, one that I feel I must now share with you. I have the magical ability to look at a shelf of books and pick out the absolute worst fantasy novel there. As a result of my super-power, I used to think I hated fantasy because it was filled with so many of the most tired and overused tropes in existence that I

 4 Tips for Loving Your Stories Anybody Can Write a Novel 2.0  Chapter 10 “The Writing Life” – Section 5 “Love of Craft”  “Tell me all your stories, tell me all the feelings about your stories. And I'll compassionately accept you, your feelings, and your stories.” - JP Sears (On how to speak to ourselves) One of the biggest dangers that I've discovered in the writing craft is in defining one's self-worth from it. With stories, writing, or art being so integral to our lives, it is hard not to let it singularly define us instead of letting it be healthy part of us. As a result, we judge ourselves ba

5 Tips for Word Use in Your Novel Anybody Can Write a Novel 2.0   Chapter 7 “Editing” – Section 4 “Words” “Words are but symbols for the relations of things to one another and to us; nowhere do they touch upon absolute truth.” -Friedrich Nietzsche Now that we've talked about how words function as part of a sentence, we're going to look at them as methods of communication, in terms of what they mean and how they function. This means that we're going to be taking a short break from all the technical grammar until next article [pauses for cheers and applause and perhaps booing from the Grammar Nazis

11 Tips for Editing Your Novel Anybody Can Write a Novel 2.0   Chapter 7 “Revision” – Section 7 “Editing”  “Words are the coins making up the currency of sentences, and there are always too many small coins.” -Jules Renard Once you finish with the drafting phase of writing your novel (the process of perfecting the plot elements and making the text mostly perfect through the process of many rewrites), you will reach the editing stage. Editing is the point in the novel-writing process where we begin to fix all of the technical errors and try to make each word, sentence, and paragraph perfect for pu

11 Tips for Romance in Your Novel Anybody Can Write a Novel 2.0   Chapter 2 “Genres” – Section 2 “Romance” (Previous Tutorial)              (Next Tutorial) “I always think the most romantic books or films are the ones where the romance doesn't happen, because it makes your heart ache so much watching it.” -Natalie Portman Within the genre of romance, as well as every other genre of fiction, one finds love stories. Love is enough of a universal human experience, that it can happen within the context of any type of story. It draws reader attention, unlike any other topic. However, the world of lite

5 Tips for Writing Your Story's Inciting Incident Anybody Can Write a Novel 2.0 Chapter 6 “Plot Points” – Section 2 “The Inciting Incident” (Previous Tutorial)             (Next Tutorial) “The inciting incident is how you get (characters) to do something. It's the doorway through which they can't return, you know. The story takes care of the rest.” -Donald Miller Once you have completed your Beginning plot-point, in which you establish the beginnings of your plot, world, and characters, your next one will be the Inciting Incident. The Inciting Incident is the point of the story at which your pr

10 Tips for Description in Your Novel Anybody Can Write a Novel 2.0   Chapter 7 “Editing” – Section 8 “Descriptions” "Setting shouldn't just consist of describing nature or a landscape, or of saying where something takes place. It is the world of specific people. It's not enough for it to feel vivid or credible; it should feel necessary." -Kaui Hart Hemmings Last time, I said that the next tutorial I worked on would be on the topic of editing, and I had every intention of doing that. So I worked this entire time on that tutorial (minus time spent writing and traveling, of course) and made a slightly disheart

11 Tips for Redrafting Your Novel Anybody Can Write a Novel 2.0   Chapter 7 “Editing” – Section 6 “Drafting”  “I write a ridiculous number of drafts. The characters change and grow through the drafting, and my understanding of them deepens. Creating characters in a novel is like shooting at clay pigeons and missing, and then missing more productively as the narrative continues.” -Robert Boswell Now that we have made it through the delightful playground of thought that is English grammar and punctuation, we are going to look at the skill of drafting. (Please stop throwing popcorn at the screen, th

PLEASE NOTE THAT WHILE THIS PAGE WILL REMAIN ACTIVE FOR PURPOSES OF EDUCATION AND RECORDS, IT IS OUTDATED. CLICK HERE TO ACCESS THE NEWEST VERSION. 10 Tips for Writing Fantasy Anybody Can Write a Novel   Chapter 1 “Genres” – Section 2 “Fantasy” With Links to Supplementary Material As you might have noticed from the Outline, my section on Story Genres is rather bare. And so during the following few weeks, I will be remedying that—starting with fantasy. I have written quite a bit of fantasy—especially mixed within other genres. But more than that, I have read both excellent and profoundly horrible

8 Tips for Composing Each Chapter of Your Novel Anybody Can Write a Novel 2.0   Chapter 7 “Editing” – Section 1 “The Chapter”  “Many first-time novelists end up rewriting their first two or three chapters, trying to get them 'just right.' But the point of the first draft is not to get it right; it's to get it written - so that you'll have something to work with.” -Matt Hughes Recently, we've been working on all of the plot-points contained within a story and what function they serve to the overall plot. And if you've been following along with the “Write-A-Novel” exercises, and writte