A Computer Wrote My Story

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Artificial intelligence (AI) is becoming an increasingly powerful tool for authors, providing new opportunities to generate creative fiction. With the ability to analyze vast amounts of data and understand natural language, AI can help authors generate new ideas, develop characters, and even write entire stories. In this article, we’ll explore …

A Biased History of Sci-Fi

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I love science fiction, but I’m a terrible fan of it. I love spaceships and technology and new ideas and robots and aliens, but I could not save a conversation by talking with any kind of fluency about representations in books about any of them. I’ve always been better at …

Writing Lessons, Wrong Books

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For writers, literature is an ultimatum. Are you going to enjoy it? Or are you going to learn something? It’s a false dichotomy, really. Doing both isn’t so hard. Growing in your skills and superpower has a certain satisfaction in itself. And sometimes understanding the fiddly background bits in stories …

Your Character’s Thoughts

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At a glance, it used to be easy to identify what a character was thinking, hearing, seeing, or saying BECAUSE the author would write: he thought, she heard, he saw or she said… The current trend is to remove such markers or filters to reduce the “narrative distance” between the …

Disabled? Differently Abled.

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Your job. Your social life. Your kid’s soccer tournament. Only a major overhaul can fix your WIP’s* character arc. And the last story you submitted for publication got a flat rejection. How do you stay motivated to write when the universe is against you? Two of our members keep writing …

Filter Out Filter Words

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The most common stylistic problem I find while editing early drafts (both my own and those of critique partners) is excessive filtering and filter words. Filter words are terms and phrases that filter action or insight through a character’s point of view (POV). Overusing them is like asking your reader …

Pacing and Paragraphs

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Having spent the last three years as a member of a robust online critique group and the last year as judge in a novel contest, I’ve learned several things about what makes writing effective. I’ve found many people have a story to tell, but only a small minority have the …

Pixlr E Review – Free Online Image Editor

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Image editing is helpful for authors who need images for blogs, newsletters, social media and other marketing activities. Those who self-publish often prefer an inexpensive image editor that is not too complicated. Photoshop is the standard for marketing professionals, but it has a very steep learning curve, not to mention …

Paul Martz Named 2022 Roswell Award Finalist

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Paul Martz is administering self-defibrillation after finding out that his story, Dr. Harriet Hartfeld’s Home for Aging AIs, is a finalist for the 2022 Omega Sci-Fi Roswell Award. Prizewinners will be announced during the May 21 awards ceremony, in which finalist stories will be read aloud by celebrity narrators. Attend …