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Philip
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Sep 12, 2023 09:35AM
Something new every Tuesday!
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Just tossing this link on here…I talk F/SF writing and publishing (not sports!) with J.V. Hilliard on…
https://www.blogtalkradio.com/mancini...
This week I tackle chapter titles. Do you use them? like them? Dislike them?https://fantasyhandbook.wordpress.com...
This week (10/10/23) I turned Fantasy Author's Handbook over to SF Grand Master…ROBERT SILVERBERG ON TO LIVE AGAIN
https://fantasyhandbook.wordpress.com... #writing #sciencefiction
This one might be hard, but…SUBMIT & QUERY LIKE A SALESMAN
https://fantasyhandbook.wordpress.com... #writing #fantasy
Following up on the video…MORE ON FANTASY SUB-GENRES, TRENDS, “TROPES,” ETC.
https://fantasyhandbook.wordpress.com...
Fiction is about the POV character’s personal, lived, emotional life, making any plot point, conflict, or aspect of worldbuilding relevant to that moment, literally that one sentence, in everything we write.https://fantasyhandbook.wordpress.com...
In description, try to appeal to all five of the senses, including smell.https://fantasyhandbook.wordpress.com
This was a dumb idea—for me—and I was right to abandon it, even if I was wrong to continue all the way through the dismal experience of War & Peace. Believe me, I have DNFed shorter books. Why did I finish the have-I-told-you-yet-how-much-I-hated-it War & Peace? I honestly have no idea. Maybe that was the last vestiges of the challenge. Maybe it was the ever-popular sunk cost fallacy. Maybe I have some deep-seated literary masochistic thing I was trying to work through. Stranger things have happened.https://fantasyhandbook.wordpress.com...
Take a look at this and notice the author is doing exactly what I recommended in terms of keeping description immediate and POV-tied, but instead of describing each character in a paragraph, he’s spread that description out over the course of the whole short scene in which an insurance investigator meets a beat cop. I’ve added bold for emphasis. Check this out:https://fantasyhandbook.wordpress.com...
BOOKS FOR FANTASY AUTHORS XXXIX: TAKE JOY, AGAINhttps://fantasyhandbook.wordpress.com...
All about our first FAH group read!
…we want to—need to—balance providing sufficient context so our readers have any idea what we’re talking about (tell) with the lived experience of our POV characters (show), which is what our readers are signing up for in the first place and is what will keep them reading. That means, yes, “show, don’t tell” if presented as a binary state: always show, never tell, is indeed terrible advice, especially for us genre authors. We need that lived, emotional experience, and we need to present our richly imagined worldbuilding.https://lnkd.in/dafw7zTt
FANTASY AUTHOR’S HANDBOOK ON YOUTUBE: A CALL FOR SUBSCRIBERS! https://fantasyhandbook.wordpress.com...
Before something can fall in a dramatic and glorious way, it has to be way the hell up in the air. There has to be a greatness and grandeur about it. And then it falls, and it’s a long time falling, and it makes a glorious and tragic noise when it hits bottom.https://fantasyhandbook.wordpress.com...
I’ve recently revised and finally made available in paperback my horror novel Completely Broken. Herein you will find all the necessary links to buy it either for your Kindle or in paperback, but I’d also like to do a version of “What We Can Learn from a Random Book,” and “How I did it, and why,” so this isn’t just a commercial, but might be of service to my fellow indie authors out there…https://lnkd.in/gf4cUrEC
WHAT WE CAN LEARN FROM A RANDOM SCIENCE FICTION NOVEL: LAND OF THE GIANTS https://fantasyhandbook.wordpress.com...
WHAT WE CAN LEARN FROM A RANDOM SCIENCE FICTION NOVEL: AFTER UTOPIA https://fantasyhandbook.wordpress.com...
SHOW, DON’T TELL: A TALE OF TWO MARSES https://fantasyhandbook.wordpress.com...
…and what if this was our next book club…?
BOOKS FOR FANTASY AUTHORS XLIV: THE CREATIVE ACT: A WAY OF BEING https://fantasyhandbook.wordpress.com...
This week’s post is based on this single sentence on Bluesky from the author @maryrobinette.bsky.social "What if, instead of trying to have a productive writing day, you aimed for a satisfying one instead?"
https://fantasyhandbook.wordpress.com...
THE TEN BOOKS THAT MADE MEI’ve been seeing this out there on social media, “the ten books that made me” thing, and it got me thinking. Over the course of my life, and I’m not young anymore, I’ve read… I have no idea how to count how many books. I really learned to read in first grade, which was the 1970-1971 school year, so I’ve been reading for fifty-four years—and I mean reading. Can I really call out ten from that lifetime of reading?
Well, let me try…
https://fantasyhandbook.wordpress.com...
Philip wrote: "BEWARE OF FRIENDS BEARING FEEDBACK https://fantasyhandbook.wordpress.com..."
This is why I quickly learned not to post snippets of my work on social media, asking for critiques or feedback. Unfortunately, I see new authors still doing this constantly. It's not for me to say if it's wrong, but I won't do it any longer.
How do you assess who, of all the people who comment, are qualified to give you feedback? They are only reading some small sample of your entire novel, so how can they even understand nuances you may be getting at with what you post? Not to mention, most of the time you receive all sorts of conflicting feedback.
I've been lucky in that I have some close friends/family that will give it to me straight, to at least let me know if I'm on the right track. They do not substitute for an editor, but they were invaluable in at least letting me know if the overall story was sound and had a good narrative flow.
Russell wrote: "Philip wrote: "BEWARE OF FRIENDS BEARING FEEDBACK https://fantasyhandbook.wordpress.com..."
This is why I quickly learned not to post snippets of my w..."
Thanks, Russell--yeah, not all feedback is good, even if it's "positive." And it's definitely not all actionable! Your writing is YOUR writing, not the cloud's.
