Here they are! All of my writing advice posts in a master-index for y'all to scan through, and reordered for slightly better presentation than chronological order.

Writing Advice

General

COMING SOON: The 5 steps of Writing Anything like a Professional
Revising a Story

Read More

[Found this sticky note at my departure gate at SeaTac, leaving EFNW. I do not believe in coincidences. 😌]

Dear Readers (including and especially all those enjoying the Autumn and the Autumn):

Read More

Well, I'll say this: I'm less dead than I look.

Anyway, today I'd like to take a moment to talk about opening lines. We've got an Original Short Story Writeoff finishing up this evening.[1] I've spent a lot of the last week reading and reviewing, and beginning some revisions on an original story of my own. Going through this month's Writeoff entries, though, got me thinking about one of my favorite topics in fiction—and one it seems I've never blogged about before—opening lines.

Read More

Hello, this is Zephyr Spark. I have this idea. In fact, I've had it for a year now, outlined and ready to be written. The story is titled "Arrow Dragon" (because I'm not good with names) and has the following plot:

Read More

Read More

First off, a belated Happy New Year to you all!

Secondly, the results of my hiatus (or perhaps, my hiatus thus far...)

Now, I don't want to just give up on a story that I started writing. It's something I wound up doing back when I was writing Yu-Gi-Oh fanfiction with my friends and we wound up abandoning a whole bunch of fun ideas we had and leaving the readers on a massive cliff-hanger.

Read More

Dealing with Jealousy and Broken Friendships

Jealousy can be a tough thing to deal with. You want to believe that as someone who tries to do the right thing or generally be a good person that jealously can't effect you. But the reality is that it is something that everyone has experienced in one form or another in their lives. It it is a natural human emotion and it is okay to feel jealous about a situation, just as long as you also work to resolve the issue at the same time.

Read More

So my local Brony group is really active and organized, and one of the things we do is a free, weekly, hour-long writing class with volunteer teachers. I've taught two lessons in it so far, and my non-Brony roommate wanted me to film it this last time because he was interested in the lesson but didn't want to come to the group meeting. So I took about eight hours to get the whole thing into good shape on YouTube, and you can watch it there. And now you can watch it here, if you have a spare

Read More

While seeing "people" on Twitter whine about first world problems is amusing to some, it is still a concern.

"It was just a joke."

Racist Jokes - First, according to Twitter users, EVERYTHING is racism, so that there already invalidates their opinion on humor.

Offensive - According to Twitter and most young people who suffer from oversensitivity, literally EVERYTHING is offensive. Once again those "people" are invalidated.

Read More

A while ago, back when I first started writing MLP fan fiction and posting it here, I wrote a fanfiction called "Nightmares Never Cease". It was my first multi-chapter fan fiction and I was, for a while, very proud of it. I had a lot of excellent ideas for future chapters, or so I thought at the time. However, one day, I started losing interest in it. It happened gradually. I got used to writing one chapter or at least a significant amount of a chapter once a day. Then it was once every

Read More

Faster than expected, the first fic from my list of upcoming stories is now released.
Originally, I wanted to give this fic more time. The idea was to study the writing style of Vanilla Mocha, the author I took this fic over from, so that I can try and write this fic like she would have, since the basic idea for the fic came from her.

Read More

Review Index

Format Breakdown

Read More

Another year, another in my series of Idea Graveyard posts, where I discuss an idea of mine that failed to get off the ground for one reason or another. What made me discard the idea, and why haven’t I tried again. Today’s subject is different from my previous failures: its shortcomings are more narrow and simple, but in some ways that makes them harder to fix.

Read More

Last week's thing is done. Another ongoing mess tidied.

This week, it's Weed Day on Weed Month. That means a compilation of stories from our weediest repeat offender. Good luck.

I've been trying really hard to wrap up Humility over the last couple of months. I'm constantly going back to the story and trying to find the inspiration that began the whole thing, and even though I can sense it, I can't quite grasp it. What's worse? The ending is already written. I have probably three or four scenes left out of the entire story before I consider it finished, and I can't figure it out!

Read More

Read More

Remember how every once in a while you and your neighborhood gets one of those neighbors from hell? The one household you wish would simply disappear and thus relieve much if not all the suffering your neighbors and you have been forced to endure for an untold amount of time?

Read More

Sister asks for help with her studies/homework.

What you were hoping for:

But nah… Mom and dad are home. Fat chance.

What you were honestly expecting, though:

Because she just such a little sweetheart.

What you got:

Read More

Today, I received a private message. As you might already know if you've seen me posting comments in some places recently, I am a very huge advocate for it that ponyfics stay online, whether on the accounts of their authors or on independent archives, such as FIMFetch or my archive account, Fluttercheer's Orphanage for Abandoned Pony Fiction.

Read More