McNoggin

Hey guys, sorry I’m late this week. I had a lot on my plate.

Better late than never though.

When it comes to character development, one of the stupidest things I ever did was ignore backstory. (Head, this is wall. Wall, meet head.)

I’m still not an expert at it though, so I wanted to ask: how do you develop a character’s backstory? Along the…[Read more]

Hey Saxon Scribes,

If you checked our guild war calendar recently, you’d know that this is the date for another story prompt competition. I know our story (and we as writers) will benefit a lot if everyone participates and shares their input.

Here’s the prompt for this guild war:

Write any story you choose with the most original and creative p…[Read more]

Saxon Scribes,

Lo, guilt is fascinating.

I totally love it. The Scarlet Letter, Crime and Punishment, The Brothers Karamazov.  These are like butter on bread to me.

Guilt is something we don’t see a lot these days. About the only times it’s used in fiction, it’s used poorly. The guilt isn’t fully built up to, doesn’t feel authentic, and leads t…[Read more]

Yes, the title of this thread is a joke. Yes, this is an icebreaker.

You are the ice, and I am going to break you to pieces.

Sorry…I don’t know where that came from.

Anyway! You all look like fun people and I really want to meet you. Here are five questions that will unveil your very soul.

1. Tea or coffee? (The world breathlessly awaits…

[Read more]

Hey guys, so things are changing.

I just held a planning meeting with the other guild masters and we were talking about how to improve the guild experience so we can all safely say the guilds are the most awesome place for writers to be.

Based on these decisions, we’ve decided to make a few changes. (PLEASE PAY CAREFUL ATTENTION).

First and…[Read more]

Hey guys,

Let’s do something different this week. We talk about characterization a lot, now let’s put it into practice.

For this to work, we’re going to need one or more volunteers. If anyone has a character who isn’t behaving quite how they want them to, post about it here and we’ll have fun dissecting them together and learning from our…[Read more]

Hey Saxon Scribes,

Look out! I’ve got a silver bullet for you today.

This is one of my top favorite articles on character development ever: https://www.helpingwritersbecomeauthors.com/boba-fetts-guide-writing-cool-characters/

Why? Because it teaches you how you can pack tons of characterization into as small a space as a single s…[Read more]

Hey Saxon Scribes,

Could you help us guildmasters out? We launched the guilds to be fun, tight-knit groups where you could inspire each other, keep each other accountable, form great friendships, and improve your craft.

We’ve seen some of these benefits for sure, but we know that there’s plenty of room for us to improve and we want to offer you…[Read more]

Hey Saxon Scribes!

Sorry I missed a week, but I’m back with our annual theme discussion on characterization, trying to dig deeper and cover a lot of ground so at the end of the year you’ll be better at characterization than when we began.

Since we just had our competition to write the best story featuring a five-year-old’s POV, I thought that…[Read more]

Recently, I was brainstorming ideas for our discussion on characterization and I came up with something I may have never discussed with anyone before. This is pretty cool, so we’re not waiting another week to dive into it.

I call this “that one thing”.

What is “that one thing”? TOT is a single item, habit, etc that is so often associated with a…[Read more]