Comic Con Giveaway! (and a Blog Tour)

UPDATE: Congrats to Haley Scully for being our winner! She picked the pocket watch!

Hey everyone! I promised to do a giveaway after Comic Con. I wanted to bring back something cool, but there was just so much going on! So instead I picked a bunch of prizes online from the fandoms I saw (and one writing book for the writers).

How to Enter:

**You must be a friend/follower to win 

- Like, or share the giveaway post on Facebook. Do both to enter twice. (Make sure when you share that it's set to "public" so that I can see that you shared it.)

- Retweet this tweet on Twitter or reply to it telling me what prize you would pick. Do both to enter twice.

- Like or Reblog this post on Tumblr. Do both to enter twice.

- Comment on this blog post, telling me what prize you would pick if you won. (must be a follower of this blog)

So, you can enter up to seven times.

(Please note I reserve the right to change prizes if for some reason the item becomes unavailable.)

Is this an international giveaway? Yes! and no. It depends on the prize you want. So if you win and you live outside of the U.S. we'll talk :)

UPDATE: Winner will be selected Dec. 14th

Prizes:

 One winner will pick from these prizes:

- (my followers' favorite) Fullmetal Alchemist Pocket Watch (become a dog of the military)
- Harry Potter Time Turner Necklace (Need a few extra minutes? No problem!)
- A key to 221b Baker Street--who wouldn't want that ;) --key chain, so you can entertain Sherlock when he's bored.
- Dr. Who Soap (Defeat Daleks by washing your hands!)
- Attack on Titan Cape (Defeat Titans in uniform!)
- Hunger Games Shirt (Gain sponsors by looking your best in this t-shirt)
- DBZ Goku Art (It's over 9000!)
- The Emotion Thesaurus. Learn how every mood is expressed physically, internally, mentally, and how it is suppressed, then learn how to write it! (This is an ebook copy, no a physical copy.) (I use this book almost every week.)

**See bigger pictures of each prize at the end of the post!

Blog Tour

This giveaway is also part of what turned into a guest post blog tour of sorts! These bloggers are awesome and will be having me as a guest over the next several weeks. :') Please visit them! And follow them! And check their blogs for a post by me :)

WritersPayItForward.Org (My post will be there Oct. 27th!)

Bonnie Gwyn (My post will be there the 1st week of November)

Amanda K. Thompson (1st week of November)

James Duckett (2nd week of November)

Jake Jeffries (3rd week of November)

Ronda Hinrichsen (3rd week of November)

Lysandra James (4th week of November)

Jay S. Willis (4th week of November)

Tristi Pinkston  (November 30th)

Konstanz Silverbow (TBD)

Nathan Barra (TBD)

Katherine Ann Olsen (December 12th)

Read More

5 Types of Omniscient POV: What the What?

Sometimes I'm strolling through the writing world, and I'm like what the what is with the writing industry's terms? There are "terms" that mean different things to different writers. Regularly, I feel like there should be more terms for things that happen in writing that don't have names, and the terms we have should be more specific. So then on my blog I have to make up more terms for mechanics (like "micro-concepts"), which I'm sure other people have done too, and that's why some terms are so ambiguous. It's like there needs to be some kind of writing-term dictator to make everything the same across the board.

That's how I feel about omniscient viewpoint. I've heard five different definitions of it, so today I'm going to break them down into five types.

Read More

Looking for Something to Read? The Lost Shards by Charlie Pulsipher

I've added a new book to my to-read list, and you might want to do the same. The Lost Shards trilogy by Charlie Pulsipher spans worlds and blends my favorite genres, and it just sounds like a cool book series! So I'm sharing it here today on my blog, so you can check it out too.

Crystal Bridge is the first installment of the trilogy.

Crystal Bridge

Kaden could use his Egg, a shell of light only he can see, to transport himself across the emptiness between universes to distant worlds, but he’s afraid. This Egg may have saved his life once, but it failed to save another and the worlds it leads to are full of hidden dangers.

Aren’s sight reaches deep into the souls around her, exposing more than she ever wanted to see in friends, family, and strangers alike. When she turns her gaze on Kaden, his Egg responds, sending them spiraling across space and time to a world where dragons, elves, dwarves, and peculiar gods dwell. Separated, lost, and alone in a world on the brink of war, these teens must come to grips with their unique gifts if they ever want to see Earth again.

Back home, a biotechnology company tinkers with the science of reality, hoping to cure death itself, but they awaken something shadowy and powerful, a being imprisoned in the void for millennia. This dark god longs to break free and devour everything, its hunger insatiable. Infinite universes would be consumed. Kaden and Aren must decide if they can save more than themselves.

Can they save us all?

Read More

Salt Lake Comic Con 2015 Highlights!

So as most of you know, recently I was at Salt Lake Comic Con as a panelist and presenter! It was my first Comic Con and my first time being a panelist/presenter at any conference.

It. Was. Awesome.

I totally loved it, and I've already started making mental plans for next year's! :)

Read More

Raw vs. Subdued Emotions: Getting them Right in Your Story

Last week I talked about point of view penetration, and in that post I said that "Often I see writers who zoom in and zoom out of their character's viewpoint seemingly randomly. I'll see scenes written in distant third-person when it would be better in close third-person."

I pointed out that how deep you want to get into your character's viewpoint depends on the effect you want for your scene, what makes a better story, and how raw and tense the emotion is.

So today I'm going to give some pointers to help you discern when your character's emotions are (likely) raw or subdued.

Raw Emotions

Raw emotions are usually very intense. They're fresh, so the person feels them sharper, sometimes to the point of being irrational.

As human beings, we usually feel raw emotions in the moment. The temporally closer we are to the incident that incited those emotions, the more raw our emotions will be. If I just found out that a friend back-stabbed me, my anger would be sharp and somewhat uncontrolled (at least internally). But the next day, they will likely be more controlled, more subdued, as the situation "sinks in."

Here are some things to keep in mind to help:

The more severe the incident, the more raw the emotions.

The more unexpected the incident, the more raw the emotions. For unexpected incidents, people usually feel surprise or shock first. So, you might want to consider that when writing.

Read More

Point of View Penetration

Over the last few weeks, I've been talking about point of view. I talked about first person, third person, and then last week I talked about some ways to pick your viewpoint character for a scene. This post follows up on those. It's about point of view penetration.

Penetration

In the fiction-writing world, the term "penetration" refers to how deep the narrator gets into the viewpoint character's point of view. (What is with some of the writing terms?) People usually use it in reference to third person point of view. Many say that penetration, and its different levels, doesn't relate to first person since in first person we are always in the character's head, and therefore, we're always deep into their viewpoint. I'm going to argue against this somewhat, but first I'll talk about penetration in reference to third person since that's how it is usually used.

Read More

My Salt Lake Comic Con Schedule

Quick post to let you all know I got my Salt Lake Comic Con schedule! :) Voila!

September 24th, 4:00 p.m. -- Harry Potter is In Your Head (In the Best Possible Way)

Description: We look for the Hogwarts Express and Platform 9 3/4 at every train station and think each owl we see is delivering letters. How has Harry Potter changed the way we look at the world around us?


September 24th, 5:00 p.m. -- Taking a Story over 9000! How DBZ Took Over the World

Description: DBZ has been an international sensation, leading its creator, Akira Toriyama, to become one of the richest writers worldwide. Get a writer’s perspective on the storytelling techniques he used to skyrocket his tale into the next dimension.


September 26th, 6:00 p.m. The Lasting Power of Harry Potter

(No description up yet)


And I got tickets to meet the actors who play Fred and George Weasley!

So if you're at SLC Comic Con, feel free to say "hi." :)

Read More

Picking the Right Viewpoint Character for Your Scene

Hey guys, today I'm picking up right where I left off in my post about third-person point of view. If you didn't read that post and are just here to learn how to pick the right viewpoint character for a scene, no worries. I'll backtrack a bit. Last time I ended on writing in third-person limited, multiple viewpoints. I mentioned that right now a lot of people feel like you should only switch viewpoint characters between chapters (this goes for writing in first-person too). And others believe you should alternate chapters or cycle through viewpoints like this:

Read More

Pros and Cons and Types of Third Person

Hey guys, I'm back to talking about point of view, which was requested by an anonymous follower. Again, there are people who have talked about this better than I can cover in a blog post. The two books I like are Characters, Emotion, and Viewpoint by Nancy Kress and Characters and Viewpoint by Orson Scott Card.

Like I mentioned in a post a few weeks ago, there are three points of view:

First-person: I thought I was going crazy.
Second-person: You thought you were going crazy.
Third-person: She thought she was going crazy.

But I forgot to mention (and another follower brought to my attention) that there are plural versions too.

First-person plural: We thought we were going crazy.
Third-person plural: They thought they were going crazy.

The plural versions are used even less than second-person, but, they have been done. I know there are some science fiction stories that are written like this because the story is about a hive mind. What about plural second-person? I guess that could be done too.

I did a post outlining the common pros and cons of writing a story in first-person that you can read here. In it, I gave some suggestions on how to get around the cons, and then deflated some of the others. But today's post is all about writing in third-person!

Third-Person

She thought she was going crazy.

In third-person, the narrator is someone watching and experiencing the story, but not participating in it. It's like the narrator is looking over the character's shoulder.

Read More

Tips for Sequels and Focusing Ideas

elementrolls asked you: I'm one of those people who tends to have a lot of ideas from the get go, but I have a hard time deciding what's just a fun idea (that I might explore in a sequel or another book) and what really needs to go in the story. Any tips on focusing?

One of the pseudo-problems I run into when brainstorming happens when I get a bunch of ideas and suddenly I think I have to either pick this idea or that idea, when most of the time, I can use both ideas. So if you have a lot of ideas, try to see if you can use most of them.

With that said, there is a point where you have to stop yourself or your story will get longer than Lord of the Rings, which isn't a bad thing, but most writers aren't looking to write stories that long.

There are also times when you don't want to use all of your ideas; for example, if you are writing a medieval fantasy, you might not want to throw in time-traveling aliens after you already have a quest story for the main plot. Time-traveling aliens just doesn't fit.

For sequels, a good technique is to look at how you can broaden or deepen your storyline so that the conflict goes farther or deeper than the book before.

Read More

Pros and Cons of First Person, How to Deflate the Cons

By request (you can thank anonymous), I'm going to do some blog posts on points of view, talking about the pros and cons, and how to get around some of the cons. I'll be pulling from two sources, Characters, Emotion, and Viewpoint by Nancy Kress and Characters and Viewpoint by Orson Scott Card. They are both good books to have for those learning the craft of writing, and they should be easy to remember since their titles are nearly identical. I like how the authors explain point of view in those books the best. They go in depth.

Now, there is a reason I'm pulling from those texts. There has been so much that has already been said on point of view that I didn't think I had anything new to add, but when I started putting this post together, I realized I did. Some of my opinions on point of view are different from the general rules. So, in this post, I'll list the general rules and then my own opinions on them after.

But let's start with the basics.

There are three points of view:

First-person: I thought I was going crazy.
Second-person: You thought you were going crazy.
Third-person: She thought she was going crazy.

Please note that narratives are hardly ever written in second-person point of view, but it has been done, by authors like Jay McInerney.  You usually see second-person in other forms of writing, like role-playing games or do-it-yourself books. Most novels and short stories are written in first-person or third-person.

Today, let's talk about the common pros and cons of first-person, and then I will go and debunk a lot of those with my own personal opinion and tell you ways you can get around some of them.

Read More

A Reminder that People Can Create Whatever the Heck They Want

Recently, one of my all-time favorite bands, Muse had a new album come out, and its release reminded me of something that a lot of consumers, especially in this day and age, forget: Creatives can make whatever the heck they want.

Too often I hear fans complain about a creative's new work. When J.K. Rowling released The Casual Vacancy, I heard people gripe about how she should have written another fantasy, or specifically a Harry Potter sequel. One person even said if she had any business sense and wanted to make more money, that that's what she should have done. I once read an article where the writer couldn't understand why J.K. Rowling was even writing anymore; she'd already made so much money writing Harry Potter so why would she want to put in the work to write anything else?

Similarly, I saw people a little upset to learn that Suzanne Collins's (author of The Hunger Games) next writing project was going to be something "ordinary" and "boring."

Months ago, I was looking at Spotify with someone and we ran into a Lady Gaga album, Cheek to Cheek. All the songs had a very "old-fashioned" jazz sound. Nothing sounded modern. The person I was with said something like, "Why would she even make an album like this? No one is going to buy it. I bet her fans were all disappointed."

Well, here is a newsflash for all the consumers out there. Creatives don't exist to serve us.

They don't owe us a thing.

Read More

Kicking "Great" Dialogue up to "Killer" Dialogue (with Interstellar)

I'll start off by being honest. This post can't decide if it wants to be an Interstellar post about dialogue, or a dialogue post with Interstellar as examples. In a lot of ways, there's not much difference. But basically, I'm going to talk about strategies you can use to help kick your dialogue up.

Similar to my What I Learned about Writing Action Scenes post and my 15+ Tactics for Writing Humor post, I've been . . . unsatisfied with the information available on writing killer dialogue. I read a couple of books on it and writing tips, but you know, I'm obsessive, and I wanted more.

Most of the dialogue tips I've read have been either on the grammatical basics of how to write dialogue, or really about how not to write dialogue. They might go through how to punctuate dialogue, and then talk about what not to do. They talk about bad dialogue.

Yeah, well, what about beyond all that stuff?

Read More