McNoggin

Hey friends,

It being Monday, we’re back to our annual theme discussion on character development. (If you’re new here, check out the previous posts. There were some really good ones.)

Today, I wanted to do something different. This is not so much a discussion as a challenge.

It can be easy for us writers to develop our own personal cliches, but…[Read more]

I’m a little late, but today I’m going to try to answer @r-m-archer‘s question about how to create realistic antagonists, especially in the area of motivations.

I want to start by pointing out the difference between an antagonist and a villain. An antagonist is anyone who resists your character’s goals, while the villain is an evil antagonist…[Read more]

Hi Saxon Scribes,

For this week in our annual theme discussion, I wanted to review a book I just read by Orson Scott Card called Characters & Viewpoint.

The short of it: this is a good solid book, not really brilliant or a game changer but still a worthy read for anyone but advanced professionals. Personally, I didn’t learn much new, but I re…[Read more]

Well, I was going to cover r-m-archer and Ethryndal’s question today, but I think I should take a week more to think about it. In the meantime, we’re going to cover Kate’s question: how does one write powerful, non-tellish internal monologue?

This is actually one of my favorite topics, so you might get a long lesson.

When you really master…[Read more]

Hey Saxon Scribes!

I hope your swords, er, pencils, are sharp because the next guild war is here!

This time we have two weeks so it won’t be so rushed and helter-skelter. 😉 I think we’ll do great.

The prompt? You’ll love it. We need to write the most emotive death scene we…[Read more]

Hi Saxon Scribes!

It’s late, but it’s still Monday. We’re back to talking about character development.

What I want to do here is open up the floor for you to voice the struggles that you’ve been going through with character development. We’ll either gather round and help you with them here in this thread or I’ll create a future thread…[Read more]

Hey Saxon Scribes,

Today’s Monday, so we’re back to out yearly theme discussion of character development. I wanted to share something I’ve picked up recently that has been hugely impactful in my writing.

Longer chapters.

I used to write chapters that were about 2,000-2,500 words long on average. 800 was my lowest. 4,000 something was my…[Read more]

This being Monday, it’s time for our annual theme discussion on character development.

I thought I’d touch on one of the best character development tools I’ve discovered: bondage.

Every character has faults, right? Their faults build our sympathy. Bondage goes farther. Bondage is something your character can’t get out of, can’t escape from, is…[Read more]

Hi Saxon Scribes,

While we took a break from it last week, the guild wars are starting up again. This time, instead of competing to see who can write the best prompt, we’re competing to see which guild can be the most productive during the week.

Basically, anyone in our guild who writes over 1,000 words this week can submit their word count at…[Read more]

Hello Saxon Scribes!

I’ve been working on a short story for a competition that is coming up fairly soonish (not the SE one) and was hoping for some feedback. If any of you could just look at this doc and leave comments and suggestions, that would be amazing.

I’m mostly trying to deal with character development, preachiness, theme, and the…[Read more]

Hey Saxon Scribes,

I barely made this post in time before Monday ended. *blushes*

Along the lines of our annual discussion of character development, I thought it would be worthwhile to camp out on the assassin stereotype for a week and take a deep look at him.

This character type has a definite aura built around them. There are a few different…[Read more]