Ryan Lanz's Blog, page 18

How to Research a Location You Haven’t Actually Been To

If you’ve been following my blog for a while, or read any of my books, you’ll know how important setting is to me in my writing. In this post about Richmond Park, for example, I wrote about how I tried to combine the setting for The Antique Love with the theme of the book, and how I used […]

How Writing a Novel is Like Raising an Unruly Child

Maybe you’re not so keen on the story you’re writing. Or maybe you’ve finished your novel already (stranger things have happened). Or maybe you’re so sick of your characters that you’ve written them off a bridge and replaced them with new ones. I wouldn’t blame you in the slightest. You see, the first few pages […]

What is Your Character’s Fatal Flaw?

If you look at great characters in literature, they each have a flaw which drives the plot forward. I strongly believe that one of the most important pieces of advice for writing a character is to give them a “fatal” flaw. So I’ve taken it upon myself to break down a few popular reads in terms of main characters and […]

7 Writing Rules For Fiction

Overwhelmed by fiction-writing advice? Me too, and I’m an editor as well as a writer. Everyone and anyone who has a blog or website seems to be keen on throwing in their penny’s worth. A lot of it is genuinely good advice. But what works for them won’t necessarily be right for you. Want proof? […]

Writing for Others–Writing for Yourself

Writers are often asked if they write for themselves or for others. In some ways, it’s a meaningless question: most authors wouldn’t have chosen such an uncertain profession if they didn’t obtain personal satisfaction from the process itself, and it’s impossible for a published author to completely ignore the problem of what other people will […]

Top 10 Things You Need to Consider If You Want to Write Comedy

I’ve been asked numerous times (less than 3) on how do I get in the mood to write comedy. Only on rare occasions (more than 390 times a year) do these answers haunt the back of my mind.  This is not a winning formula or a how to episode, but more along the lines of […]

Why Choose Indie Publishing?

Why Indie Publishing? With the release of my debut novel, Mist Falcon, I’ve been asked why I decided to indie publish.  Inherent in the undertone of this question lies a second question, perhaps more to the point: was my book not good enough to be “really” published?  Couldn’t you find a traditional publisher to work […]

Write Everyday, Even If You Hate It

For the last three weeks, I was forced to write everyday in order to complete a presentation for an English symposium and to complete my creative writing portfolio for a public reading (each are requirements of my major and emphasis). The problem initially was my lack of enthusiasm. I have, in the past, written not […]

On Writing Futuristic Sci-Fi Detective Stories

A few weeks ago, I was watching an “Andromeda” DVD, when I suddenly noticed that the episode that I was watching contained one of my favourite types of sci-fi storyline. I am, of course, talking about sci-fi detective stories. If anyone is curious, the episode in question was called “All Great Neptune’s Ocean” and it […]

The Difference Between Stories and Novels

Humans are born storytellers. Shortly after learning to string sentences together, we start sharing them: “Mommy, I did this…” or “Daddy, I did that….” We are eager to hear about others’ experiences, supposedly to learn from them and avoid their mistakes, and we like basking in the glory that our own stories give us (after […]