Ryan Lanz's Blog, page 8

5 Ways to Brainstorm Story Ideas

Brainstorming is generally the first step of the writing process. When planning a story, brainstorming helps to spark creativity and helps us to come up with new and original ideas or maybe even put news twists on old ideas. Here’s a list of 5 ways I generally go about brainstorming story ideas:   Pinterest/Inspiration Board […]

Flash in the Pan – Tips For Writing Flash Fiction

I write flash fiction in the Friday Fictioneers group every week. Flash fiction is very short fiction, typically under 750 or 1,000 words. Within it, some people distinguish between “drabbles” (100 words), “dribbles” (50 words) and so on. These distinctions don’t really matter.  The genre is good exercise for a writer in editing skills and […]

Should You Self-Publish or Traditionally Publish?

So today we’re talking about if you should Self Publish or Traditionally Publish that baby you have been working on for months or years. This of course is no easy question to answer, and also very highly personal to each writer. So I am going to discuss my opinion on the matter. And a little […]

Biggest Writing Pet Peeves

Pet peeves. We all have them. That one thing that gets under our skin and ticks us off. It can be any number of things depending on the person you ask. For some people it can range from bad body odor,  unreliability, slow drivers, fake people, tardiness, just to name a few. When it comes to […]

Classic Writing Advice: Write Every Day

In this new series, I want to explore some of the classic writing advice given to authors and provide my opinions on any experiences with them. I don’t do this because I think I’m some brilliant writing authority – far from it. Rather, I’ve learned the most valuable writing lesson of all, one that you’ve […]

Getting to the Heart of Plain Language

You probably don’t know this, but I’m a member of Plain Language Association International. Plain language is all about clear communication. It’s a way of writing and presenting information that makes it easy for readers to understand. In our globally connected world, accessible language and clear communication are more important than ever. So today, I’d like to tell you a bit about […]

How to Keep Your Blog Alive

Wouldn’t it be wonderful for your children and grandchildren to read your blog? Okay, maybe not all of it, but your best posts, those which have touched upon matters that are precious to you, or that have informed, entertained, or enlightened others. I don’t know if I’ll ever have children, let alone grandchildren, but if […]

Do You Write Chronologically?

Recently, I’ve been dealing with…well, we won’t call it writer’s block. I wasn’t out of things to write, merely stumped on how to get from Point A to Point B without creating major plot holes. And it was very tempting to just skip the problematic bit and go ahead to the next chapter or section, […]

Why Authors Need to Be as Accessible as Possible

As an author today, you know that every reader is valuable. You love your readers; you want to keep the ones who are loyal and reach new ones. That’s what promotion and growing a business is all about – reaching new consumers. That’s why it’s so important for authors to be as accessible to readers […]

Start From the Middle: How One Single Idea Changed Everything

I didn’t write ONE sentence of my current book project this week. Not a single word. But man did I make some progress! I told y’all how I like to outline the entire story in multiple levels of detail before I really get to writing a manuscript (Planning: The Importance of Outlining), so you probably don’t […]