"Go! Go! Go!" Natalie didn't need to be told twice. With the clock ticking, the building was only minutes from coming apart in a blast that would level half the block. If she could get away before then, she had a chance, but if not ...

"Go!" the voice in her ear shouted once more.

"I'm going!" she snapped, crouching by the body of the colonel and retrieving his sidearm. Some of his thugs could still be standing between her and the exit.

Read More

Welcome back, readers (and by extension, writers). It’s time for another Being a Better Writer post. The topic for this week? It’s another request, and an interesting, if complex, one. Today, we’re going to discuss how to write a scene of warfare. Not a shoot-out, or a simple fight, but a full-on war.

Read More

Sentence construction is one of those touchy things with a lot of novice writers. Personally, I blame the education system for not doing an adequate job explaining things, but the truth of the matter is that there are a lot of young writers out there (or worse, novice critics) who pass judgement on their own or others work without knowing much about what they’re actually passing judgement on. In the best case scenario, this leads to confusing feedback. In the worst-case scenario? Bad

Read More

Welcome to week three of this five week series. Revising is the topic of discussion for this week's post. You can visit the previous week by clicking here.

Read More

Oh boy.

Yep, this post had to come at some point or another. Given the charged climate of “PC” these days (that’s “political correctness,” not “Personal Computer,” sadly) days, this topic is one that’s come up again and again in writing. Online, offline … just about everywhere.

Read More

Read More

IN WHICH PROGRESS HAPPENS KIND OF
As I write this, it is 2:15am Central Daylight Time, so I'm going to keep it short for once (yeah, I know).

Read More

Welcome back readers! If you’re seeing this early early early Monday morning, that means that I succeeded in getting it written on Saturday before my work shift … so that I wouldn’t have to worry about not having written it during my Monday and Tuesday work shifts.

Read More

I’m pretty sure that all of you have read more than one story in your life, and I’d bet that most of you noticed that stories can be told from a variety of perspectives. If you prefer a somewhat fancier term, such a perspective can be also called a point of view (POV for short). Types of POVs, their usage, and common pitfalls are what’s this miniguide going to be about. Just like in case of the guides previously published here (and archived in my blogs), this is meant primarily for beginners

Read More

Creating a ‘good’ character is an evergreen topic in many groups on this site, so I thought it might be worth a shot to dedicate another miniguide to it. Here I’ll focus primarily on some aspects of a character’s role in a story and the ways in which these aspects affect character creation. The guide might be also a bit messier than usual as putting together these various tidbits of advice would require a far longer text to be somewhat coherently connected.

Read More

Read More

The Diamond Dog's Guide to Engineering is complete, and with it a heap of info from readers about what can be done better. Yes, the story felt a bit rushed, but it was largely an experiment to see if I could write out an entire story line with no previous planning, whilst attempting to maintain a fairly rigorous schedule. As it stands, I only overshot my own schedule by about a week, which was mainly due to

Read More

Welcome to week four of this five week series. Editing is this weeks topic. You can also visit last weeks post by clicking here.

Read More

Welcome to week one of my five week how-to for April. In this five part series I will be going over how I come up with ideas, how I write them, and how I edit them into a finished product. Pictures, examples, and personal touches included!

This week is all about coming up with the initial idea. Everyone wants to make a good article, essay, or narrative, but if you don't know where to start it can drain your inspiration rapidly.

Read More

This is a post I didn't actually think I'd ever write.

Hyperbole? Not really, actually. As you may have gathered from the title, today I'm going to be talking about music, which is a common enough topic that I've been asked about by many a young writer. They want to know if someone can listen to music while writing, what I listen to, etc.

And for the longest time, I've just said "Yes" and left it at that. I listen to music when I write, you can too.

Read More

Read More

What a weekend. I don't know about you guys, but I finally got my hands on a copy of Halo 5: Guardians and played through it. The short? It's a good thing the multiplayer is so good (and I do mean good) because the campaign and story are flat-out awful. And I do mean awful. The shooting's fun, and the environments are neat ... but the story is a hackneyed, jumbled, poorly thrown-together mess, and the dialogue ... oh the dialogue ...

Read More

All right! Request time! Today's topic came from in a message from a reader, who expressed concern that some of their works had quite a bit of passive voice over active voice, and wanted to change that. So they were hoping I could offer a little advice on the matter.

I can, though it might not be the advice they expect.

Read More

Right! Let's get this week started! The sun is shining, the sky is blue, and I'm inside looking at it through a window with my hands on a keyboard. All for you guys.

Read More