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How to Swat the KILLER BEs Out of Your Writing (available on Kindle for $2.99)
Nancy Owens Barnes’ How to Swat the KILLER BEs Out of Your Writing is a modest book at just 96 pages in print, but provides those valuable little guidelines you want when editing and proofreading your work, whether you’re writing fiction, a blog, or a term paper. Continue Reading »
There are lots of things that can go wrong when writing about Sci-Fi and Fantasy worlds: inconsistencies (“why didn’t he just use that blue-lightning-bolt spell on them like he did 80 pages ago?”), a few too many deus-ex-machina moments (think Harry Potter), etc.
But my biggest “Oh, NO!” when reading — and it is all too common in these genres, it seems — is the dreaded INFO DUMP. The worst offenders come in the middle of an action scene. Continue Reading »
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available on Amazon
Like most books in the Writer’s Digest “Elements of Fiction Writing” series, Monica Wood’s Description is aimed at the beginning or aspiring writer. The few 3- and 2-star reviews this book received on Amazon are from people who found the book too basic. But come on, you have to start somewhere, folks! Those same people invariably recommend instead Rebecca McClanahan’s Word Painting: a guide to writing more descriptively. Indeed, McClanahan’s book is truly excellent and I will be giving it a 5-star review here soon. But to recommend one book over the other is pointless: the two books address the topic of description in two completely different ways, and with different purposes. I think they are both worth reading. Continue Reading »
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available on Amazon.com
In Creating Character Emotions, author Ann Hood makes the argument we’ve heard so many times before (not that it isn’t worth repeating): show your characters emotions rather than telling about them. Each chapter is devoted to one emotion (36 in all). Many reviewers on Amazon complain that the chapters are too brief and lack any in-depth look at the issues. Continue Reading »
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The Dramatic Writer's Companion
(also on Kindle!)
Will Dunne’s The Dramatic Writer’s Companion: Tools to Develop Characters, Cause Scenes, and Build Stories is one of several books I’ve read that target playwrights and screenwriters. In this case I think that’s a shame, as the exercises in this book, especially for character development, are useful to anyone who creates fictional worlds. Continue Reading »
</span> available on amazon.com Some of the reviewers on Amazon claim they feel “talked down to” by Roy Peter Clark’s Writing Tools: 50 Essential Strategies for Every Writer. But I sure don’t. In fact, the author uses examples from his own earlier writing to show how it could be improved by using the steps outlined in this book. That was a very refreshing approach, where how-to books are concerned. Continue Reading »
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(also for Kindle!)
As I’ve stated elsewhere, I want the world of The Eruseq Chronicles to be one in which sexuality is irrelevant. The characters’ problems are universal, and who one loves has nothing to do with anything. I did not want to create a world in which homosexuality is “tolerated” (frankly, I have no interest in being tolerated, thank you).
But, let’s get real. In trying to build this dream world, I’ve created a big problem for myself.
Continue Reading »
As I work on the trilogy “The Eruseq Chronicles,” I will be posting back story, character sketches, riffs, and the like.
I’m including what I’ll call “off topic” articles: thoughts on creativity, writing, reviews…
Check out the menu on the right for the latest stuff. I now have all four parts of the back story to the trilogy posted. I plan to post Chapter 1 at some point (and maybe Chapter 2), closer to when the first book, “War of the Unwanted,” is ready to come out.
Thanks.
Jeff
I’ve been putting this off, for all the reasons you can imagine, but it’s finally time to ‘fess up.
I have decided to retire from composing music. It’s been coming for a long time. There are many reasons behind it: feeling that my best work is behind me, feeling like I’ve run out of ideas, and so on. But the main reason is that I have “lost the faith” where composing is concerned.
I originally wrote this article in 2005 and posted it on my music website. Here I present an updated version. While it addresses specifically my experience as a composer, many artists in other disciplines have told me the article describes a universal problem.
In my late twenties I came to the conclusion that composers of art music are museum pieces. What we do — write chamber and orchestral music — is an anachronism, an activity whose meaning was defined in another time and reality. Since our work provides no one with power and generates no wealth, it has no application in the modern world. I often said aloud back then that I should have been born a hundred years earlier. While my career as a composer probably would have been a busier, more consistent one a hundred years ago, less filled with “secondary” activities (such as earning a living), I feel differently now. At least, a little differently.
