Smiling writer with headphones on working at laptop as others behind are criticizing

Do Not Take My Advice! Part 1. The Critique

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My advice on writing? Do not take or give advice on writing. There is no one way to write but the way you write. You will most likely be writing differently tomorrow, anyway. That’s my advice: take it, don’t take it, it’s all the same to me. Aw, come on, …

Writer with pen and paper creating new worlds from his imagination

Tips for Building Worlds

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Worldbuilding can be the most liberating piece of telling stories in speculative fiction, particularly in sci-fi and fantasy. Being unbeholden to the limits of our world allows your characters to have an entirely different set of environmental, cosmic, and cultural settings. It’s an opportunity for you, as the writer, to …

Blue fantastical female adorned with flowers and intricate jewelry

Creative Writing: What does ‘creative’ mean?

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What we writers do is called ‘creative’ writing. But what is that, really? What do we have to do, to be ‘creative’ in our writing? The definition of ‘creative (adjective)’ is ‘involving original ideas in producing an artistic work.’ So, to be ‘creative’ writers, we must make original ideas. Ideas not heretofore conceived …

Three book covers side by side.

Book Series Review: Circus of Unusual Creatures

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Tammie Painter is the author of The Circus of Unusual Creatures series I have recently been binge reading. Not such a binge since there are only four books in the series so far. The narrator of the stories is Duncan, aka Brutus Fangwrath, Deadliest Dragon in the West. He loves …

Bruce Schindler picture with high tech background.

Meet Our Member: Bruce Schindler

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What inspired you to start writing?  High school: short humorous story read aloud got positive reaction. Wrote poetry and science fiction while in Vietnam, none published. Was a photographer/editor in the public affairs detachment of the Wyoming Army National Guard. After wife died, remarried horse lady and moved to Nebraska. …

Foundation Book vs AppleTV Production

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Isaac Asimov’s Foundation series is a seminal work of science fiction, prominently topping many lists of ground-breaking and genre-defining works. The original story consisted of three related books: Foundation, Foundation and Empire, and Second Foundation. Each represents a step for humanity in the evolving political progression from the current First …

Babel–Meaning or Madness?

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Into the plethora of genres and sub-genres in today’s fiction rockets BABEL, Or the Necessity of Violence: An Arcane History of the Oxford Translators’ Revolution, by R. F Kuang. The title says it all. History, deeply interwoven in a fantastic view of what might have existed, the long (500 pages …

Young man with sunglasses at desk writing with strange pen.

The Six Narrative Perspectives

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As a writer who has been critiqued and often critiques other authors, point-of-view (POV) is a common topic. However, talking about POV is not enough because it is intertwined with the overall narrative perspective of the work. That perspective is a mix-and-match of several concepts that should stay fairly consistent …