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Pulp writing isn’t quite a subgenre and it isn’t quite a medium. Yes, it once had stylistic and even aesthetic boundaries, but the sensibilities behind those boundaries have outlived them by decades, and pulp is now more an approach to storytelling than anything else. Happily, it’s an approach that has a lot to teach modern authors, and if you can adjust to the pulp way of thinking, you’ll have …
[Read more...] about Understanding Pulp Will Make You A Better Author
For a certain type of reader, a book that includes a map of its setting is catnip. For these readers, your blurb, your title, and your cover are secondary concerns: the map’s the thing, and you had them as soon as they saw it. For other readers, a map is a nice addition – especially if you use it to improve the narrative experience or, in the case of non-fiction, help the reader understand the …
[Read more...] about What You Need To Know About Commissioning A Map For Your Book
Genre labels aren’t always useful, but properly utilized, they can help budding authors determine the type of writing they want to bring into the world. In few places is that more necessary than with bizarro fiction, a subgenre of weird writing so unusual that ‘bizarre’ is in the name. That’s why, in this article, I’ll be taking a look at how to identify bizarro fiction and how to use that …
[Read more...] about What Makes Fiction Bizarro, And What Makes Bizarro Awesome?
Kate Bernheimer is like fiction’s knight errant, on a mission to rescue fairy tales from the tall, dark tower where they’ve been locked away with other vestiges of childhood – like optimism and the color pink. Bernheimer’s writing style is magical and her modern fairy tales are understandably popular, but the average writer may think they don’t have much to learn from her unless they’re trying …
[Read more...] about 3 Ways Kate Bernheimer Can Help You Improve Your Writing
Naming characters is a mercurial task. Sometimes, characters arrive in your mind wearing a name badge. Sometimes, their name is so hidden that you get the impression they’re only joining your story to lay low. Generally, experimentation is the answer, but I’m not here today to give you tips on where to find names. That’s something we covered in The Definitive Guide To Naming Your Characters, …
[Read more...] about 6 Things Authors Forget When Naming Their Characters
Sometimes, you’re midway through a story and you suddenly realize what you need to change to make it work. A later development requires some earlier foreshadowing, or you need to remove a detail so your new path makes sense. It’s a lightbulb moment, and often the point where a story really comes together for many writers, but what do you do if you can’t make the change? In fact, what do you do if …
[Read more...] about ‘Retcon’: How To Rewrite Details In An Ongoing Series
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