Ryan Lanz's Blog, page 17

Creative Writing vs Writing as Therapy

I had a rough childhood and adolescence (but hey, who hasn’t?), and often times found consolation in making up stories. I would write short, gothic stories with monsters and witches that helped me cope with my everyday issues. Later on, when I became more serious about my writing, I realized that creative writing is so […]

Lies About Writing that I Sometimes Believe

It’s dangerous to be a lone writer. Because writing is such a solitary pursuit, unless we have other writers to interact with, we can lose our perspective and objectivity, especially where our own writing is concerned. And while we know that everyone’s path is unique, sometimes we compare ourselves to others and find ourselves lacking. […]

Commercial Fiction vs. Literary Fiction: Which Do You Write and How to Tell the Difference?

As soon as you sit down to market your work, you need to know what it is that you’ve written. You may have some idea from comparing your work to other people, but it helps to know what you’ve written from your writing itself, as just “having romance” in your story doesn’t make it a […]

10 Reasons for Authors to Blog

One of the questions I’m most asked is “How do you find time to write a blog?” I can answer this quite simply–I find the time in the same way that I find time to do the grocery shopping, read poetry, or stroke the cat. We all find the time to do the things we […]

What Not To Do When Sending Off Your Manuscript

All right, as some of you know, I recently did some work for a publishing press. What I did was read unsolicited manuscripts (stories sent by authors with no agent) and decide if my boss should read it and publish it. During the weeks I spent doing this, I came to discover that authors really […]

How Writers Can Recover From a Bad Beta Reader

If you’ve been hit by a bad beta reader you’ll know it. Emotionally, at least. You’ll feel panicked, anxious, FULL of self-doubt, and lower than low. However, your rational mind will try to talk you out of it. Writers need to be thick-skinned, it will say. All feedback is valuable in some way, it will add. But […]

How a Writer Can Manage Tone

The opinion of an author, character, or sometimes both, can be expressed in the tone of a written piece. It’s a little tricky because sometimes readers might interpret a character’s opinion as reflective of the author. If the character happens to be rather unlikeable, this can have unfortunate consequences. If this happens, about all the […]

5 Things Your Readers Need From You

When you’re first starting a story, there’s a lot to think about—your characters, plot, and world-building, to say nothing of critical questions like what to name your character’s pet dog. But there are five things you need to include in the opening scenes of your book to help your readers.   Characters. This may sound obvious, […]

One Old Rule to Start a Story

When I was about sixteen or seventeen and getting back into writing prose fiction for either the second or third time in my life, I had a rule for how to begin my stories. It was basically something like: “Write the first draft and then delete the first paragraph”. Until I got better at writing, […]

Five Simple Ways to Make Your Writing Funnier

“You’re either funny or you’re not.” Well, that’s a load of shitake mushrooms. If you can learn to play the guitar and tennis and how to cook a mushroom, you can sure as shitake learn to be funnier. Getting better at something is simple – you just learn how that something works and practice it until […]