I talked last time about how I chose the place and time for my story. And once that was done, I started looking into the culture of modern and historical Peru. The rabbit hole of link clicking was astronomical so I'll spare you those details. I learned a bunch of basics and found a whole… Continue reading Food in Modern Peru
Tag: novel
Where in the World is My Setting?
Let's talk about setting. And in particular, how to pick a setting. If you're anything like me, you've set your books in made up places vaguely based on somewhere you've been or somewhere you live. Write what you know, and all that. And, if you're like me, you've also probably done some research about what… Continue reading Where in the World is My Setting?
Reading About Writing – Save the Cat
So, to start this off, I'll admit I've been looking for some good "How to write a novel" books for a while and nothing was really sticking. I'm not sure if that's my level of interest or the books themselves or what but none of them really seemed to address my actual needs. Fast forward… Continue reading Reading About Writing – Save the Cat
Changing Covers
I just thought I'd stop by to say I had to change the cover of Slow Motion Whirlwind. I thought I could get over the fact that they didn't look like my characters but it turns out I could not handle that. So I re-did it! What do you think?
Calling It on the Re-Write
Well, if you've been following the situation with Slow Motion Whirlwind, you will be aware that it is my first novel and that I had to cut some of my chapters in order to improve the story. After sitting on it for a little bit, and showing it to a couple of beta readers, my… Continue reading Calling It on the Re-Write
Writing with Graphics
When I was writing Slow Motion Whirlwind, I wrote it like a novel. The only exception I made for posting it on wattpad was to shorten the chapters into more "bite-sized" pieces because it was more suitable for the way people read there. When I posted the novel, I left it to read like a… Continue reading Writing with Graphics
Universal vs Personal Experiences
Something I am struggling with when writing A Year in Mondays has been the balance between my personal experiences, the overarching experience of having children, and Julie’s specific story. It is difficult sometimes to separate my experiences (and those of people around me) from those I have read on the internet, for example. So in… Continue reading Universal vs Personal Experiences
A Study in Serialization
As I was finishing the last chapters of my first posted novel, Slow Motion Whirlwind, I was pondering how the book would do on the serialization site that I was posting it on. That’s a story for another post, but while all of that was happening, I was suddenly struck with an idea for a… Continue reading A Study in Serialization
Writing As Improvisation
When I agreed to co-write this book with Allie, I’ll admit I was extremely nervous. I had checked out her stories so I knew she could write, and we'd talked a bit so I knew she was nice, but we had “known” each other for all of fifteen minutes when we started drafting the story.… Continue reading Writing As Improvisation
How We Created Characters
Once we had the very skeleton plot organized, Allie and I moved into creating our two main characters. This is where things got tricky because we worked by consensus. What I mean by that is if we didn’t agree on something, we kept looking until we found something that we did agree on. We work… Continue reading How We Created Characters