Ryan Lanz's Blog, page 2

Cover Reveal – Crossroads of Redemption

  All right, everyone. Book 4 in my Red Kingdom series is almost here. This cover was made by the fantastic team over at Damonza. Working with them has been great.   Here’s the cover and a teaser blurb below!     All roads lead to Abalreen in this high stakes clash of factions.   More […]

What My First Time Ghostwriting Fiction Taught Me

Last week I finished up the first of several ghostwriting assignments I am working on for a client. I had never ghostwritten fiction before (it’s a very different experience ghostwriting articles), so I wanted to share a few key things I learned. If you are considering ghostwriting as a possible side gig, you might be […]

3 Tips for Writing Every Day

The key to getting better at writing is practice. To meet their writing goals and exercise discipline, most writers try to write every day. But how do you write when you’re burnt out or need some more inspiration? Check out these three tips for writing every day without sacrificing your mental well-being.   Set Small […]

9 Tips for Writing Deep and Interesting Characters

Think of your favorite story for a moment. I bet that in that story, the characters feel so real that you almost expect them to walk right off the page. This is exactly the kind of magic we’ll talk about – the magic of creating convincing characters, This magic is what brings the character to […]

What You Should Know About Historical Fiction

What’s your favorite genre? For some it’s romance, others it’s fantasy, sci-fi or maybe a mystery/thriller. For those that know me well I enjoy reading a variety of genres, so it’s hard to pick one genre over another when I enjoy different books spanning across the many genres of fiction. However if you were to ask me what genre is your […]

A Pep Talk for Writers Hesitating to Submit Their Work to Lit Mags

Submitting your work to a literary magazine can be a daunting prospect. It’s natural to feel attached to a piece of work you’ve poured your heart into, and once your baby is out in the world, it goes from being a personal project to something open to public critique. But the journey of a thousand […]

The Adverb Problem and Why Authors Should Care

In this article I will set out to explain why so many famous authors (Stephen King being perhaps the most vocal) warn other authors against the use of adverbs. In fact, King’s hatred of adverbs is so intense that he’s been quoted as saying, “Adverbs are evil.” You will discover the role of adverbs in […]

Is Success in the Writing Industry All a Matter of Luck?

I recently saw a piece of “writing advice” going around (and you know how I feel about writing advice) that stated that people who get [traditionally] published aren’t “lucky”, they just never gave up, they kept at it, they worked hard, they kept revising and kept submitting, despite all the rejections, and eventually they found […]

Dialogue: Bringing Characters to Fruition in 5 Tips

The dialogue between characters is one of the most important parts of a novel or short-story and it’s important to get it feeling just right. When someone is reading a story, the ways in which characters express themselves and what they’re saying is very important for the reader to feel like they’re getting to know […]

Finishing Off That First Draft

Like many writers before me, and sure to be many writers after, I find the final push towards that completed first draft is extremely difficult. For some reason, the brain decides to press hard on the brakes while simultaneously throwing up a wall, breaking all real flow of writing and making it very hard to finish […]