What is the difference between a character who is little more than window dressing for a story and one who is vibrant and realistic? The idea that...
Agendas and Motivations
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Prose and Cons
Write Like a Bulldozer
There is a direction that bulldozers go. That direction is called "forward". When you consider vehicles that can look to a point some ways off and...
Villains
In response to my "7 Types of Heroes" blog, someone suggested that I take a look at villains as well. That got me thinking about just what it takes...
How to Kill (Your Characters)
The worlds we write can be dark and dangerous places. In many cases, these dangers are a key element of the plot. Sword fights, monster attacks,...
7 Types of Heroes
You don't need a hero to have a story, but if you want to write about heroic deeds you're going to end up with one somewhere along the lines....
Earth: A Failure of World-Building
There are many elements that go into making a world fit for fantasy storytelling. World-building is a skill any good fantasy writer needs to...
A Sense of Self-Publication
A funny thing happened on the way to formatting my novel Firehurler for ebook publication: It ended up published. To say that the process went off...
The Breadcrumbs Method
Anyone I've talked to about writing has heard this one before. When I write, I lay out a trail of breadcrumbs as I go. When Hansel and Gretel did...
Idioms: Friend or Foe?
A large element of fantasy is world-building. You are creating a place, in whole or in part, from your imagination, and describing it to your...
Firehurler: the Writing Experience
Now that Firehurler is in the final stages of editing, I think it's a good time to reflect back a bit on how I got here. This is the first...