J.Parkhurst

Hey guys,

I forgot there was a word war this week! I’m going to need to set myself some automated reminders.

Anyway, we’re going to do the best we can. The guilds have decided to war starting today and ending Tuesday night.

This works like it always does. We write as much as we can and try to outdo everyone else!

Here’s what can count toward…[Read more]

Hey Saxon Scribes, we have a homepage now!

Josiah fixed it up all nice for us. This isn’t officially launched, but I thought I’d give you a sneak peek at it so you can share any suggestions for how to make it better.

New Wessex

The purpose of this page is be awesome, store important/fun information, and let curious…[Read more]

Hey guys,

I thought with our discussion of handling tricky subjects in the article realm it might be neat to discuss writing criminal types.

Here are a few questions to get us started:

1. How do we write highly engaging criminals without endorsing their criminal activity?
2. Can one write a criminal character just for the purposes of the plot…

[Read more]

Hey Guys,

I’m going to do a slightly more in-depth post about disposition for this week’s theme discussion topic. If you missed it, here’s my first post on disposition: https://storyembers.org/forums/topic/disposition/

This being a relatively new idea for me, I’m still learning about it and I did a lot of that learning over the past week. The…[Read more]

Hello, my wonderful Scribe Peoples! I thought I’d pop on real quick and share something I just discovered.

Lately, I’ve been dealing with the dreaded Stuck Scene. I know where I’m going, and I want to get there, but when I sit down to write, I just… can’t… get there. Everything seems gray and blah. My heart isn’t in it and I don’t even know…[Read more]

Hi everyone!

So right now I’m brainstorming/outlining for my WIP, and in short, I know where I’m going to end, I’ve figured out my beginning, but it’s a little hard for me to continue plot-brainstorming. Maybe it’s because it’s a lot of work, but I’m hesitating to try to create a plot line from the first plot point and getting it to end where I…[Read more]

Let’s talk about the most undervalued character type in all of literature.

Parents.

The obvious fact is that most parents in novels die or are already dead (at least it seems like it). The less obvious fact is that even when they’re around, they’re not very important as parents.

What may be even less obvious is that even when they do matter as…[Read more]

Okay, so I just did a post with the mona lisa in it. Forgive me. It was stuck in my head.

The word war is now over and we hope to announce the winner tomorrow. (If you haven’t given me your word count yet, please go post that in the related thread.)

Right on the coattails of that guild war we have another battle. War is life! *raises…[Read more]

Hey Saxon Scribes,

I hope you don’t mind if I splatter my not-fully-formed thoughts all over this page.

For a while, my writing conscience has nagged me about this topic I call Disposition. To me, it encapsulates everything that makes a scene matter. Having just stepped out of rewriting a scene where I did not use this principle, it got me…[Read more]

Guys, we’re in another war.

The six guilds are competing in a massive word war. The guild that collectively writes the most words (for fiction projects) this week wins. That’s all there is to it — very straightforward. The war starts right now and ends Sunday night.

If you’ve been wanting to increase your weekly word count, now is the…[Read more]

Fight it… Run from it… Destiny still arrives.

A rather melodramatic observation, considering how happy I am to finally be here.

I stand silent before a half-cold hearth, my back to the long darkness of the hall, and watch the embers burn. Coals lie scattered like isolated cities between charred remains of smoking logs. The smoke drifts past…[Read more]