J.Parkhurst

I recently made a big breakthrough. As you may know, whether you write speculative or real-world fiction, you need to do research for your story feel authentic and rich.

But… research is hard. Particularly if all you want to read is fiction, like me. 😉

Enter audiobooks. For me at least, audiobooks take almost no commitment to plow through.…[Read more]

ATTENTION!

If you haven’t seen it, I made a post about some changes to the forum and guilds. They’re not that big really and I think they’ll improve everyone’s experience.

On a related note, I’m trying to move everybody to subscribe to new posts in the guild so I don’t have to tag everybody each time I make a post. To do this, go to New Wessex.…[Read more]

I’ve been thinking recently about something that’s never caught my attention before. Taboos. If I could only ask one question about a culture to learn about it, I’m tempted to think I’d ask about its taboos.

Taboos could keep a whole nation in slavery (for instance, if they think it brings bad luck to question their priests).

Or taboos can…[Read more]

Prompt wars are back. Tada!

As a refresher, we have two weeks to come up with a submission. Word limit is 2,500.

This war’s prompt has got me terrified. The prompt?

Write a non-cliché happy ending.

How do you write happy endings? 😮 😮 😮 And how do you make them non-cliché?

I guess this will be instructional for me. 😀

@ethryndal @corissa [Read more]

Hey Saxon Scribes!

Last week I missed our theme discussion because I got buried in research on the topic. Since then, I compiled all my thoughts into an article which I plan to submit to SE. First though, I’d like to share it with you and get your feedback. 🙂

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There I was, gobbling up page after page of Out of the Silent Planet. Was…[Read more]

Hey, guys!

I’m excited to announce that I have started a blog. You can check it out here:

Noah Litle Writes

Right now I’m in a kind of pre-launch stage, where you guys can give me some feedback on the posts and everything before I launch it for real on the first of March.

If you guys could tell me if the posts are helpful/enjoyable/coherent it…[Read more]

Hey everyone on the forum. Yes, you.

There’s a Christian film coming out February 22nd called Run The Race and I actually got the chance to preview it at a film festival last year.

Guys, it’s really good! Maybe it’s just slightly cliché, but there’s so much going for it that it gets a resounding A+ from me.

Here are some things I liked about it…[Read more]

Hey Saxon Scribes, as someone who never follows politics, I feel sheepish writing this, but I’ve learned a few things through experience and I wanted to leave you with a challenge.

Few things define a society like its government. Yet, for those of you like me who aren’t familiar with the ins and outs of politics, this can be unnatural t…[Read more]

Saxon Scribe, ahoy!

I’m rubbing my hands that I get to tell you about Sanderson’s third law today. Brandon Sanderson is, of course, a famous fantasy author and he developed three laws for how to develop magic systems. You may enjoy reading all his three laws, but today we’re going to focus on law #3 because it applies to spec-fic writers and…[Read more]

Hey guys,

The other guild masters and I have been talking about the guilds and we thought we might be able to improve them with a few minor changes. I would really love your opinion on these. We’re not planning on any of these yet, just toying with the ideas, but if you really like them we might roll them out.

Here they are:

1. We would open up…

[Read more]

There are two pitfalls with worldbuilding. It seems you either don’t worldbuild enough or you worldbuild so much you can’t keep track of it all.

Worldanvil helps you fix both these problems. Thanks to @kate for recommending it to me.

While this site is built for speculative fiction writers, it could also work well for anyone who wants to…[Read more]

Drumroll please!

Today, we take a day off from our discussion of worldbuilding to focus on our guild member @bama-rose. *hands you the microphone* What do you want to share? It could be a description of yourself, a question, or a request for critique (or all three)!

@ethryndal @corissa @raemarie @bama-rose @kate @r-m-archer @literatureforthelight…[Read more]

Hey friends,

Some of you may know that about a year ago I released an in-depth e-course on show don’t tell.

Today, I completely finished all the scripts for part 3 of the course. I’m looking to see if anyone is interested in being a beta for it. What’s in it for you? You’d get free access to part 3 when it is released (value ~$70-$100).

I’m…[Read more]

@ethryndal  @bama-rose  @raemarie  @corissa  @kate  @r-m-archer  @literatureforthelight  @j-parkhurst  @gabbyj  @cassandraia  @chalice  @noahlitle  @julianne  @germaine-han  @maddiejay  @sesi  @r-j-karas  @rosemarylouise  @msqueen8  @samuel  @eden-anderson  @professorsjb  @elizabeth  @scarletimmortalized  @parker  @katthewriter  @bama-rose @literatureforthelight @daeus-lamb…[Read more]