The title says it all. From Military SF writer Rick Partlow.

Chris Fox on using character tags. If you don’t know what they are, watch, and your writing will improve by leaps and bounds.

So you’ve written a novel, or a story, or a comic, and you want to turn that into a career. What do you do now?

First, you need to assess your mental state. Are you strong enough to handle people seeing it? Commenting upon it? Critiquing it?

If not, don’t worry. Fear is a normal reaction. Listen to it, query it, figure out what you’re afraid of. You might need professional help here, or just a good friend that won’t hurt you.

But let’s assume that you have built up a thick skin. You can handle it. What then? (more…)

I had fears. Big fears. Soul-crushing fears.

Let me give you an example. In 2003, I was a semi-finalist in the Writers of the Future contest. I’d sent in my story (which, BTW, predicted Bluetooth headsets 15 years before they became a thing) after months of sleepless nights and fearing what would happen.

I finished in the top 10, but I didn’t win.

Every quarter, WotF receives some 4 000 entries. My story was in the top-10 of those entries. The top 0,25%. It was judged to be better than 99,75% of all stories submitted that quarter.

But I didn’t win. (more…)

There’s a battle going on right now, between the pro-AI futurists and the anti-AI rights creators. Both sides got some excellent points that you can find online. I’m not going to comment on that.

I will say that I’ve been using the Midjourney Art AI and while it took quite some getting used to (and the results, as yet, can’t compare to a true illustrator – for one, a human illustrator can count the number of fingers on a hand,) there are some things that AI is really, really good at.

Like scraping lots of images and extracting the similarities from them. Which is exactly what we do when we’re doing cover research. Take a look at this:

It may not be the greatest covers in the world, but they’re definitely western covers. That’s the prompt I used “book cover, western”.

If I was writing western, assuming I knew nothing about the genre or the covers, I’d instantly know a few things: (more…)

You’ve finished your first short story. You’re proud, maybe a little scared. And you have no idea what to do next. Should you start editing it? (no) Should you hire an editor? (no) Should you throw it in the trash? (no, no, and a thousand times no)

This is what you do (and I’m fully aware that I’ll get some hate for this, but this is how the writing world works):

You correct any obvious spelling and grammar mistakes, and you send it out to markets that publish this type of story.

Yes, unedited.

Why? Because right now, you’re likely not able to edit it. You don’t have the skills for it. Anything you do to it will make the story worse.

How do you get those skills? (more…)

First: write.

That’s it. Write. You’ll need to learn a lot, but writing is a craft as much as an art – you’ll learn a ton by just writing.

Second: keep writing.

The most common “mistake” prospective writers do is giving up. Learning is difficult. It can be hard. There will be parts where you feel like everything you do is crap. It might even be crap. (more…)

Have you ever had a case of BITS? That’s “Big Important Thing Syndrome.”

That’s when we attach a lot of importance to something, which then brings with it all manner of strange and destructive critters, from plain fear to insidious perfectionism and delusions of grandeur. Which completely destroys our creative ability.

The solution? Do something that moves you forward that is completely NOT important. (more…)

There are times when you look at a book by your favorite writer and despair. That your writing stinks, and that you’ll never be that good. That there’s no point in continuing. You’ve been doing this for months, or years, or decades, and you’re still not good enough.

I feel you pain – but there’s an easy explanation. (more…)

Here’s the truth: Length doesn’t matter.

Ever.

I could throw in a juvenile pun here, but I’m going to spare you that. Instead I’ll focus on the fact that there is no set length for a chapter.

Translation: there are no rules. (more…)