Come See Me at Salt Lake Comic Con! Here is my Schedule:

Next week is Salt Lake Comic Con, and I spent a good part of last week getting ready! And I'm getting excited. Salt Lake Comic Con is the third largest Comic Con in the world, and I get to be a presenter, moderator, and a panelist. ^_^

Here is my schedule:

Thursday, September 1st

2:00 p.m.

Room: 253A

15+ Tactics for Writing Humor

Learn the secrets to writing humor with over 15 methods that make readers laugh, with examples from The Office, Harry Potter, The Amazing Spider-man, The Fault in Our Stars, Zoolander, Enchanted, Diary of a Wimpy Kid, Emperor's New Groove, The Series of Unfortunate Events, Elf, and more. Come prepared to laugh. Leave never having to feel clueless again.

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Pairing Behaviors with Odd Demeanors for Originality

When it comes to characters, writers, especially new writers, tend to match their characters' demeanors up perfectly with their behaviors. The bully is a straight-up jerk. A class clown is always laughing and joking. Someone who is brave tends to be a bit loud-mouthed.

But the reality is, people aren't really that clear cut and standard. Honestly, it's been since elementary school since I met a bully who was straight-up jerk. But we tend to want to match up demeanors and behaviors stereotypically.

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Traditional Publishing: Short Stories and Poetry

This week is my last installment in my publishing post series, and this one is about the small stuff. Here is how to publish short forms of creative writing.

Short Stories

1. Write the story.

A short story is a narrative under 7,500 words. Keep in mind that short stories that are on the shorter end tend to have a greater chance of being printed, if you are seeking physical publication. This is because it's less costly for the magazine. If you are only getting published online, word count probably doesn't matter as much. If your short story is accepted into a printed anthology, word count will depend on the anthology. Whatever the case, make sure your story is short enough to stay interesting, but long enough to cover the important parts. Sometimes I see unpublished short stories that are too short--the story isn't properly developed or fleshed out. Other times they are too drawn out, the author including too much information. When writing short the powers of implying and subtext are your friends. But this post isn't about how to write a great story. It's about how to get one published.

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So I read Harry Potter and the Cursed Child . . . (Book Review)

(No Spoilers in this Section)

Initial Reaction to the News

When I first heard about Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, I had cautious expectations, and maybe even some skeptical ones.

First, adding more to an already satisfyingly complete story can do more harm than good.

Second, I know J.K. Rowling is listed as a writer, but she didn't really write the script, just gave the other guys a few ideas to run with. I've seen this done with another franchise I love and the result was terrible.

Third, it's really hard to pull off something like this. The audience usually has high, but very vague expectations, which makes it very difficult to deliver.

As for actually reading the book, well, there's a problem. It's a script. And really, scripts are meant to be watched, not read. I'm an English graduate, so I've read a few scripts in my day, and I almost never enjoyed it. The only exception was Dr. Faustus. So, again, I was skeptical, but I mean, let's be honest. This is Harry Potter, of course there's going to be something I like about it because I'm so biased toward it. I love plays themselves, I just don't like reading them.

I considered not reading it and waiting until the play came to the U.S., but I only considered it for a few seconds--I'm going to Comic Con next month as a guest, and people will expect me to have read it.

So, basically, I wasn't sure what to think about it and personally didn't expect much. But then months ago, I accidentally-on-purpose read some of the spoilers, because honestly, how much of a "spoiler" could they be? The main story is complete.

Man, was I wrong about being unspoilery. The two I read I did not see coming--and I loved them. So two points to Cursed Child on that--and I was excited to read it.

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Self-Publish or Traditional Publish? Why not Both?

September asked me to write a post about my experience with being a hybrid author, which (for those not in the know) means being both self-published and traditionally published. Many well-known authors are now hybrids, having years ago made their name as bestselling, traditionally published authors, and have recently released their backlists through self-publishing. Other authors make it big on their own and then are offered mega contracts by big New York publishers who can help those superstars achieve things that are difficult to attain through avenues open to self-published authors.

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Insights on the Traditional Publishing Life

Today I have a guest, author Shallee McArthur here to tell us about her experience with traditional publishing.

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Ah, the Land of Traditional Publishdom. So many of us want it, but those gates are closed pretty tight. I started knocking on the gates—AKA querying my book, THE UNHAPPENING OF GENESIS LEE—with trepidation. Querying is no picnic. Except…for me, it kinda was. Within a week after I started querying, my agent offered. Within another week, I had two more offers. I accepted my agent Hannah Bowman’s offer with glee.

This was it! The hallowed gates of Publishdom had opened to welcome me, and what a welcome! My publishing path was paved with gold!

But here’s the thing. There is no path of gold in Publishdom. Sure, it only took me a week to get an agent, but it took me almost a year to get a publisher. And then I did, and I squealed and twirled my kids around the kitchen! I signed a shiny contract and had a shiny editor! Which, honestly, there are few better things in the world than that moment. Then, many other moments came.

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Traditional Publishing: What it is, How it Works, and How to Do it

Two weeks ago I did my post on self-publishing, and now it's time for its counterpart: traditional publishing.

Traditional Publishing

Traditional publishing is when a publishing house publishes your book. Here in the U.S. (sorry, I'm not researching every country) there are four (used to be five) large publishing houses called "The Big Four," they are Simon & Schuster, Harpercollins, Penguin Random House, and Hatchette. Each of these publishing houses have what are called "imprints." An imprint is a trade name the publishing house prints under. So, you may have noticed books published by Knopf (such as Eragon by Christopher Paolini). Knopf is actually an imprint of Penguin Random House.

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My Reasons for Self-Publishing

For the next month, I'll be blogging all about publishing, particularly for beginners. Last week I wrote an article, Self-Publishing: What it is, Who it's For, And How it Works, and next week I'll write about how to publish traditionally. Today, I have self-published author Lucinda Whitney here tell why she chose self-publishing.

Lucinda Whitney was born and raised in Portugal, where she received a master’s degree from the University of Minho in Braga in Portuguese/English teaching. She lives in northern Utah. When she’s not reading and writing, she can be found with a pair of knitting needles in winter, or tending her herb garden in the summer. She also works part-time as a substitute teacher. You can check out her books here.

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Self-Publishing: What it is, Who it's For, And How it Works

I've talked about a lot of different things on here, but ironically, one thing I haven't actually really talked about is publishing and publishing options and quite a few of my readers don't actually know much about how the publishing process works. I will admit, I am not an expert, so if you are a published author and have your own opinions and advice, please leave it in the comments for others.

For the next few weeks, I'll be blogging about the publishing process. I also have a few guests who will tell us about their experiences publishing. Today, I'm going to talk about some bare basics. So, if you already know all this stuff, feel free to browse around my older posts. Here are some you may not have seen: Playing with Foils, The Value of Shock, Your Writing Eye.

Publishing Options

If you've written a novel and want to pursue publication, you really have two main options. You can self-publish or you can publish traditionally. Self-publishing is where you publish the book instead of a publishing house. Traditional publishing is where a publishing house does it. I can't fit the basics of each in this post (heck, I can hardly fit one into one post), so I'm going to focus on self-publication first.

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The "Twins as Clones" Writing Epidemic

Let's be honest, people are naturally interested in twins and multiples. When my sister had twins, she could never make it through the grocery store without people stopping and talking to her about twins in general and twins they know. Conversations became something like this (newsletter subscribers, sorry, but you have to see the video off my blog):



But while we may find twins and multiples fascinating, it's important to remember they are each distinct human beings. Why this is so hard to grasp, I don't know, but for some reason this reality rarely ever makes it into the storytelling world. Instead, most writers I know opt-in for the "Twins as Clones" approach, where they are essentially the same person in each body. You could pretty much merge the two characters into one and nothing would change. Nothing would really change in the character, and more often than not, nothing would change in the story. The twins are like one person in two bodies. Heck, even Lyra and her daemon Pantlaimon are more different from each other, and they are one person in two bodies.

I think one reason writers make twins into clones is because they've seen it done this way, and it's been done so many times that it's cliche, and of course, cliches are the first things that come into our minds when we brainstorm. I also think it happens because writers sit down and say, "I'm going to have twins in my story," and they create the characters "together" instead of as individual people. (More on that later.)

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The Setting Thesaurus Books Are Here: Help Becca And Angela Celebrate!

Some of you may know from following my blog that I'm a big fan of the Emotion Thesaurus by Angela Ackerman and Becca Puglisi. I use it in my own writing on an almost weekly basis. In my opinion, it's a must-have for the writer's library. So when I heard that Becca and Angela had two new thesauri coming out this week, I volunteered to help publicize it on my blog. Their books really are amazing, so helpful, and thought-through.

* * *

There's nothing better than becoming lost within the story world within minutes of starting a book. And as writers, this is what we're striving to do: pull the reader in, pull them down deep into the words, make them feel like they are experiencing the story right alongside the hero or heroine.

A big part of achieving this is showing the character's surroundings in a way that is textured and rich, delivering this description through a filter of emotion and mood. It means we have to be careful with each word we choose, and describe the setting in such a way that each sight, sound, taste, texture, and smell comes alive for readers. This is no easy task, especially since it is so easy to overdo it—killing the pace, slowing the action, and worst of all, boring the reader. So how can we create a true unique experience for readers and make them feel part of the action while avoiding descriptive missteps that will hurt the story?

Well, there's some good news on this front. Two new books have released this week that may change the description game for writers. The Urban Setting Thesaurus: A Writer's Guide to City Spaces and The Rural Setting Thesaurus: A Writer's Guide to Personal and Natural Spaces look at the sights, smells, tastes, textures, and sounds that a character might experience within 225 different contemporary settings. And this is only the start of what these books offer writers. In fact, swing by and check out this hidden entry from the Urban Setting Thesaurus: Antiques Shop.

And there's one more thing you might want to know more about....

Becca and Angela, authors of The Emotion Thesaurus, are celebrating their double release with a fun event going on from June 13-20th called ROCK THE VAULT. At the heart of Writers Helping Writers is a tremendous vault, and these two ladies have been hoarding prizes of epic writerly proportions.

A safe full of prizes, ripe for the taking...if the writing community can work together to unlock it, of course.

Ready to do your part? Stop by Writers Helping Writers to find out more!

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Please Don't Write this Sentence in Your Opening

I regularly read unpublished work. A lot of writers have a cool idea for their protagonist's backstory, one that is meant to create a sense of mystery for the reader. I love stories like that. I love backstories. I even love a good flashback. But I cannot tell you how many times I've read sentences similar to this one in an opening of a story:

Jasper pushed the memories away from his mind.

To the average person, there is nothing wrong with this sentence. But when you read a lot, and you read that sentence a lot, you start realizing the problems in it.

There are many variations to this sentence, or at least lead-ins to this sentence. Here are a few others:

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Sanderson's 3 Laws of Magic Systems

I've never done a post on magic systems. The closest I've gotten to it is my post on writing magical items. One of the reasons I haven't approached magic systems is because others have done a much better job talking about them than I can, and to be honest, I haven't studied them that much. But my work-in-progress does have some magic systems in it, even though I don't always think of them as magic systems, and so today I'm bringing you the source that I use when I need help with magic in my story--and really, it's such a good resource that it deserves its own post on my blog.

Brandon Sanderson is one of the top-selling fantasy writers today, and what's even cooler is that he understands and is conscious of what does in his writing and can teach it well to others.

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