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I recently read Mistborn: The Final Empire by Brandon Sanderson, followed closely by the sequel, The Well of Ascension. I was supposed to read Mistborn for the Atlas Book Club selection in July. For those who don’t know, the Atlas Book Club was started by Sterling of Fragmentary Blue. I was going to save my comments on Mistborn for the book club...

So I’ve been working on this 21 Days To A Novel exercise, and I wanted to let you know how it’s going. The past couple of days I worked on included days 13 and 14. These steps had me identifying the forces in the world that were there to either help or hinder the characters in various ways and then describing how the world (defined loosely depe...

I’m having a bit of trouble with my writing, and I hope you can help me out a little bit. My novel is set in a fantasy world based on Viking mythology. I’m struggling with how to make the dialogue sound authentic. Obviously modern slang is out. But what about contractions? Can my characters say “It’s a fine day” or “That’s not what I meant” or “...

The second in my series of reports on my research into the Vikings. Viking society was divided three basic class levels: thrall, bondi, and jarl. There are a couple of other intermediate levels, which I’ll describe below. Also, keep in mind that these did vary somewhat by name and function throughout the 300 years or so of the main Viking era an...

If you’ve been reading my Word Count Journal lately, you’ll know that I’ve been trying this thing called 21 Days To A Novel. Ing asked about it, so I’ll expound a little. 21 Days To A Novel is a writing exercise by Michael A. Stackpole. He initially developed it in his podcast series, The Secrets. It started off in a kind of spontaneous way as ...

The Word Count Challenge has been great for me. For years now, I’ve daydreamed about writing, about being a writer. But I never actually wrote anything, except for here and there a couple of pages that didn’t really lead anywhere. Thanks to Liz and the Word Count Challenge, I’ve written more publishing-oriented fiction in the past three months t...

The first chapter of a book can be really hard to get right. Here’s a summary of advice from The Secrets Podcast Special Editions #1 and #2 by Michael A. Stackpole. The first chapter is a microcosm of what will follow in the rest of the book. It gives an idea of the characters, the world, and the conflict to come. First chapters sell the book t...

Recently I’ve been listening to a couple of podcasts about writing. It has been educational to hear about some of the basics of writing from experienced, published professionals. When I already know something they’re talking about, it reassures me that I’m at least semi-intelligent and not missing something obvious. When I haven’t heard somethin...