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Can You Really Tell A Compelling Story Without Conflict?

May 13, 2020 by Robert Wood Leave a Comment

Can You Really Tell A Compelling Story Without Conflict?

Ask most authors for their advice on storytelling and, sooner or later, they’re likely to get to the subject of conflict. To many writers, conflict is the basic unit of story – the thing that turns a series of events into an actual narrative – often more important than setting, characters, and even narrative cohesion. After all, you can lose all of those features and still write something that …

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What You Need To Know About Finding, Performing, And Enjoying Your First Live Reading

November 27, 2019 by Rebecca Langley Leave a Comment

What You Need To Know About Finding, Performing, And Enjoying Your First Live Reading

Your book has been published, you’ve raked in a few good reviews, and you’re riding high on the success. Not wanting that momentum to taper off, you’ve been thinking about ways to keep the energy going, and you’ve discovered that hosting an author reading is one of the best ways to expand your fan base and connect with new readers. If you’ve never done this before, it can feel pretty …

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Authors Need To Know About Aphantasia: Here’s Why

November 20, 2019 by Robert Wood 6 Comments

Authors Need To Know About Aphantasia: Here’s Why

Some writing advice is practical (cut your adverbs), some is theoretical (the structure of a story influences its message), and some is factual (the short-fiction market isn’t what it used to be). Personally, I’ve always found that the best writing advice deals with perception – the ability to understand how someone else will process your art. A hard fact of human nature can be revealed to you, …

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Is It Worth Publishing Your Writing In A Zine?

June 17, 2019 by Robert Wood 1 Comment

Is It Worth Publishing Your Writing In A Zine?

When it comes to self-publishing, most authors are looking to compete with major publishing houses: professional covers, impeccable book binding, flawless presentation, the whole nine yards. It’s certainly true that there isn’t much middle ground – readers have little time for books that ‘almost’ look professional – but there is another way to do things. Enter the zine. Zines are deliberately …

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What’s A Sensitivity Reader, And Do You Need One?

June 5, 2019 by Fred Johnson

What’s A Sensitivity Reader, And Do You Need One?

We live in divisive times. As boundaries between ethnicities, nationalities, social classes, sexualities, and genders are chipped away, the old norms of personal, national, sexual, ethnic, and economic identification and organization must be reevaluated. This is, unsurprisingly, a messy, dramatic, sometimes unpleasant, but ultimately necessary process, and the results impact everything – including …

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What Makes Fiction Bizarro, And What Makes Bizarro Awesome?

May 22, 2019 by Robert Wood 2 Comments

What Makes Fiction Bizarro, And What Makes Bizarro Awesome?

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 …

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