Archive for the 'learning to write' Category
January 31st 2012
Drawing on Literary Traditions: THE HUNGER GAMES and THE MAZE RUNNER as Case Studies
A graduate student in writing, someone I am mentoring, asked me a question some time back about what she should do if she came up with an idea for a story that she really wanted to write, but that had been written about previously by other writers. My answer to her was basically this: “First [...]
January 23rd 2012
The Skill List Project: Writing Descriptive Passages
This is another post in The Skill List Project: an attempt to list all the skills involved in writing and selling fiction, particularly science fiction and fantasy. As promised last time, we’re going to look at writing description, one of the most important skills in prose fiction. When you think about it, prose fiction primarily [...]
December 21st 2011
The Skill List Project: Scene Beginnings and Endings
This is another post in The Skill List Project: an attempt to list all the skills involved in writing and selling fiction, particularly science fiction and fantasy. In the past few posts, we’ve been looking at writing scenes. We’ve talked about the flow of plot from scene to scene and the need for conflict, difficulties [...]
November 25th 2011
The Skill List Project: Scene Design
This is another post in The Skill List Project: an attempt to list all the skills involved in writing and selling fiction, particularly science fiction and fantasy. Last time around, I talked about the flow of plot from scene to scene. This time, we’ll be looking at the skill of designing a single scene, once [...]
November 23rd 2011
What Are Your Favorite Re-Readable Books?
The Thanksgiving holiday is looming, and I’m actually traveling right now, so I’m going to keep this fairly brief, and I probably won’t be able to respond to comments due to lack of internet access. But that doesn’t mean that you can’t continue this discussion amongst yourselves. I’m doing some graduate student mentoring at a [...]
November 14th 2011
Secrets of Writing – Transitions
I don’t often write about the craft of writing – there are a lot of people out there a lot better at it than I am, and they can teach it a lot better than I can, too. But transitions are an aspect of writing I don’t hear discussed a lot, and I think they’re [...]
October 25th 2011
The Skill List Project: Plot Flow
This is another post in The Skill List Project: an attempt to list all the skills involved in writing and selling fiction, particularly science fiction and fantasy. Last time around, I talked about overall plot structure, and how to develop a starting seed into a plot…but I was working on the “big picture” level: the [...]
October 21st 2011
Works In Progress
I’ll be teaching this weekend at the South Carolina Writer’s Workshop Annual Conference. It’s an event I’ve done before and one I love at attend. Great people, talented writers, and a welcoming community. One of the topics I’ll be covering in the course of several panels and workshops I’ll be running is self-editing and revisions, [...]
October 15th 2011
What Is YA?
My post last month, Is Harry Potter YA?, turned into a more general discussion of the definition of YA in the comments, so I decided I might as well continue the discussion this month. I first heard the term Young Adult applied to books in the early ‘70s. It described fiction written for adolescents, who weren’t [...]
September 29th 2011
The Skill List Project: Starting to Plot
This is another post in The Skill List Project: an attempt to list all the skills involved in writing and selling fiction, particularly science fiction and fantasy. Last time, I laid out some basic terminology for talking about plot. This time, I’ll look at how to get started on developing a plot: figuring out the [...]
Author Information
David B. Coe
David B. Coe is the author of eleven fantasy novels, including the books of the LonTobyn Chronicle, Winds of the Forelands, and Blood of the Southlands. He has also written the novelization for the Ridley Scott production of ROBIN HOOD, starring Russell Crowe, that is due out in May 2010. In 1999 he received the Crawford Fantasy Award, given annually by the IAFA to the best new author in fantasy. He has a Ph.D. in United States environmental history and lives on the Cumberland Plateau in Tennessee with his wife and daughters. Visit site.
James Alan Gardner
James Alan Gardner got his M.Math from the University of Waterloo with a thesis on black holes...and then he immediately started writing science fiction instead. He's been a finalist for the Hugo and Nebula awards, and has won the Theodore Sturgeon Memorial Award as well as the Aurora award (twice). He's published seven novels (beginning with "Expendable"), plus a short story collection and (for street cred) a Lara Croft book. He cares deeply about words and sentences, and is working his way up to paragraphs. Visit site.
James Alan Gardner
James Alan Gardner got his M.Math from the University of Waterloo with a thesis on black holes...and then he immediately started writing science fiction instead. He's been a finalist for the Hugo and Nebula awards, and has won the Theodore Sturgeon Memorial Award as well as the Aurora award (twice). He's published seven novels (beginning with "Expendable"), plus a short story collection and (for street cred) a Lara Croft book. He cares deeply about words and sentences, and is working his way up to paragraphs. Visit site.
James Alan Gardner
James Alan Gardner got his M.Math from the University of Waterloo with a thesis on black holes...and then he immediately started writing science fiction instead. He's been a finalist for the Hugo and Nebula awards, and has won the Theodore Sturgeon Memorial Award as well as the Aurora award (twice). He's published seven novels (beginning with "Expendable"), plus a short story collection and (for street cred) a Lara Croft book. He cares deeply about words and sentences, and is working his way up to paragraphs. Visit site.
David B. Coe
David B. Coe is the author of eleven fantasy novels, including the books of the LonTobyn Chronicle, Winds of the Forelands, and Blood of the Southlands. He has also written the novelization for the Ridley Scott production of ROBIN HOOD, starring Russell Crowe, that is due out in May 2010. In 1999 he received the Crawford Fantasy Award, given annually by the IAFA to the best new author in fantasy. He has a Ph.D. in United States environmental history and lives on the Cumberland Plateau in Tennessee with his wife and daughters. Visit site.
S.C. Butler
Butler is the author of The Stoneways Trilogy from Tor Books: Reiffen's Choice, Queen Ferris, and The Magician's Daughter. Find out what Reiffen does with magic, and what magic does with him... Visit site.
James Alan Gardner
James Alan Gardner got his M.Math from the University of Waterloo with a thesis on black holes...and then he immediately started writing science fiction instead. He's been a finalist for the Hugo and Nebula awards, and has won the Theodore Sturgeon Memorial Award as well as the Aurora award (twice). He's published seven novels (beginning with "Expendable"), plus a short story collection and (for street cred) a Lara Croft book. He cares deeply about words and sentences, and is working his way up to paragraphs. Visit site.
David B. Coe
David B. Coe is the author of eleven fantasy novels, including the books of the LonTobyn Chronicle, Winds of the Forelands, and Blood of the Southlands. He has also written the novelization for the Ridley Scott production of ROBIN HOOD, starring Russell Crowe, that is due out in May 2010. In 1999 he received the Crawford Fantasy Award, given annually by the IAFA to the best new author in fantasy. He has a Ph.D. in United States environmental history and lives on the Cumberland Plateau in Tennessee with his wife and daughters. Visit site.
S.C. Butler
Butler is the author of The Stoneways Trilogy from Tor Books: Reiffen's Choice, Queen Ferris, and The Magician's Daughter. Find out what Reiffen does with magic, and what magic does with him... Visit site.
James Alan Gardner
James Alan Gardner got his M.Math from the University of Waterloo with a thesis on black holes...and then he immediately started writing science fiction instead. He's been a finalist for the Hugo and Nebula awards, and has won the Theodore Sturgeon Memorial Award as well as the Aurora award (twice). He's published seven novels (beginning with "Expendable"), plus a short story collection and (for street cred) a Lara Croft book. He cares deeply about words and sentences, and is working his way up to paragraphs. Visit site.
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