I've said this before, but while I'm not huge on 80's references, the general mood of 80's films really stuck with me. The emphasis on friendship being more important than anything and of never backing down in the face of something much bigger than you resonated with me.
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Sam Sykes
Sam Watkins is an American epic fantasy writer who publishes fiction as Sam Sykes. His debut trilogy of novels, the Aeons' Gate series, was appreciated by critics for its characterization and dialogue, and for its deconstruction of standard fantasy tropes, but criticized for its meandering, derivative plot. He is the son of Diana Gabaldon, author of the Outlander serie
Ideally, every event in a book should serve a purpose. But it’s totally fine to write a scene because you want to and figure out its purpose later.
A lesson to learn is to protect your dignity and self-worth as a creator. A lot of people want to buy it, and some may offer a high price tag, but once it’s gone, you can’t get it back.
Anxiety is exacerbated by a loss of control. Remember to prioritize issues based on what you can do for them, rather than how much stress they cause. The more effort you can make, the more in control you’ll feel.
Tools for Writing: 1. Computer 2. Thesaurus 3. Shovel 3a. Hole you dig in your yard to escape the terror that your writing might simply be screaming into a void from which no sound, nor dream escapes 3b. None at all 4. Coffee or tea (gotta have that caffeine!)
DO read books with compelling characters whose choices drive the plot. DON’T tape hornet nests to your hands and call yourself Hornethands Jones.
I feel like 'fun' is frequently dismissed as a quality of a book, usually played down as escapism or, usually, just as a side note. Few people actually talk about what a fun book means. For me, it’s never meant escapism. 'Fun' means joy. It means the prose is exciting, the characters are great, the…
Muting and unfollowing some people have taught me that there are people ostensibly on your side that are 100% committed and invested in keeping you stressed and terrorized.
A lot of people talk about the toxicity of nerd culture, about how we get mad at people for liking the wrong stuff, and some of that's true. But the inherent legacy of nerds is to like what you like, regardless of what other people might think.
Worldbuilding works when it's used to facilitate imagination. It doesn't work when it's used to stifle it. The goal is to make it seem like the world is alive and exists with or without you. When it's used as a gate to insist that certain things couldn't happen, then it no longer serves a purpose…
It's weird when someone leaves a review that's 90% composed of how much they hated a character and you know that's incorrect. If they really hated them, they wouldn't have spent that much time talking about them.
A novel has roughly six stages of 'done.' 1: 'I know how it ends, but not how to do it.' 2: 'I know how to do it, but haven't written it.' 3: 'I wrote it, but it sucks.' 4: 'I wrote it again, but it needs work.' 5: 'I finished the work, but I'm still not happy.' 6: 'good enough'
I always prefer writing about people. People grow, change and sometimes change back, but they remain persistently irritating and open-ended until they die. And sometimes afterward, too.
It's so weird how the mere act of listening to people has become the most precious commodity a human can give or hoard.
Protip: If you write a bunch of words you hate, it doesn't make you a bad writer. Sometimes you have to write a lot of bad to figure out what's good.
WRITING PROTIP: Finding it hard to maintain concentration? Just stop thinking about all the ways it could fail and how the world might be completely destroyed before you finish!
I say this a lot because it bears repeating: it often feels like the evil in this world, and all its machinations, are too big to challenge. That loss of control leads to despair. But to reassert control, to do good that you can observe and take strength from: be a harbor for someone. Be a rock they…
Think of how much of your life you spend opening doors think how much time you could reclaim by just running through them
There is absolutely zero way to predict how your creative career will go. You could be read by a producer and get a movie tomorrow. You could hit it big 10 years from now. No one knows. The anxiety, of course, comes from the fact that it's hard to plan a future around something no one knows anything…
A good exercise is to take everything out of the scene you’re writing, leaving only the dialogue, and see if you can still tell who’s talking.