Rachel

This is a bit late, but have at it!

Today, we’re kicking off a whole new theme discussion. The writing life!

This week and next, I’m writing the topics and over the weeks you’ll get some great stuff from the other guildmasters. It’ll be a fun ride.

Now, about organizing beta readers.

We know that critique is vital for our growth as writers,…[Read more]

We talk a lot about poorly done conversion scenes. But believe it or not, it’s possible to do well.

That’s what our new prompt war is all about! Our goal is to write a believable conversion scene. 😀

I think this is going to prompt some great discussion, push us, and be a lot of fun.

I can’t wait to get started.

@ethrundal @corissa @raemarie @k…[Read more]

Hey guys,

I’ll be releasing part three of my Show Don’t Tell Course in the next few weeks.

For the marketing side of things, I thought ideally I wouldn’t just tell people what the course will teach them, but show them. 😛

To do this, I’m looking for a scene I could edit just using the techniques I teach in my course. Then I could show the raw…[Read more]

Hey Saxon Scribes, we’re doing another word war! This is a great chance to plow through your manuscript.

At the end of the week, submit your word count here: https://goo.gl/forms/CtXuDDqnPKBlzmPF2

@ethryndal @corissa @raemarie @kate @j-parkhurst @gabbyj @chalice @noahlitle @julianne @germaine-han @sesi @r-j-karas @rosemarylouise @msqueen8 @timoth…[Read more]

Hey Everyone! This may be our last week on worldbuilding and I wanted to touch on a subject that’s dear to me.

If you listened to our second podcast episode, you heard me argue that Tolkien was a great writer largely because he was a great philosopher. For those of us who invent our own worlds, we have a great opportunity to point to certain…[Read more]

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]