Steven R. Southard's Blog, page 12

The Amazing Christmas Machine

Though I usually blog about writing, today I’ll depart from that to focus on a fun historical story for the holiday season.

Among my late father’s belongings, I found a scrapbook of family history compiled by my aunt. It included an article copied from “A Lake Country Christmas,” Volume 2, 1983, pages 3 and 4. Written by Cindy Lindstedt, the article bore the title “Christmas Memories: The Southard’s of Delafield.”

It concerns a Wisconsin farming family living in a house with a prominent mu...

Would the Julie & Julia Formula Work for You?

If you’re struggling as a writer, not achieving the success you imagined, Catherine Baab-Muguira has a solution for you. She calls it the Julie and Julia Formula. Does that formula work?

In a wonderful blogpost on Jane Friedman’s site, Ms. Baab-Muguira described the formula. At its essence, she says “you can reach your dreams by loving another person’s work.”

Give your obsession free reign, she says, and your book will write itself, fueled—even supercharged—by your passion.

Tha...

Extraordinary Visions eBook

A year ago, you got excited about the publication of Extraordinary Visions: Stories Inspired by Jules Verne. Then you learned the book wasn’t available in your favorite format, the ebook. Disappointed, you kept checking, as days became weeks became months.

Good news! Your patient wait is over. You may now purchase the ebook version. It’s available from the publisher, for the Amazon Kindle, and soon from other booksellers. I’m sorry it’s taken so long.

Those of you who prefer to read on ...

Decrypting Critique Comments

When you seek comments about your writing from others, sometimes the feedback will confuse you. What do you do about that?

Feedback can come from critique groups, beta readers, editors, or anyone whom you’ve asked for a review. Often busy with their own lives, these commenters might, in their haste, provide comments you don’t understand.

They may just leave a question mark without explanation, or give you vague advice, such as ‘reword this’ or ‘this bothered me for some reason.’ Worse, ...

Taking Vonnegut’s Story Shape Theory Further

Is it possible to depict all story plots in graphical form? If you could, would you find some graph shapes more common than others? The late author Kurt Vonnegut thought so.

In 2004, he gave a lecture describing his system and that talk is so good, you ought to watch the video, at least the part starting at minute 38. He’s entertaining. Someone has animated Vonnegut’s graphs at this delightful website.

His lecture covers several basic story types illustrating a protagonist’s experienc...

48-State Odyssey

I just completed a road trip to all forty-eight contiguous states. First of all, my apologies for not visiting people I know in many of those states. The point of my trip wasn’t for visiting, but just to get through it in a reasonably short time.

During the trip, my wife and I drove 9898 miles in 21 travel days. We made the journey in two loops, a counter-clockwise western loop covering the states west of the Missouri River, and a clockwise eastern loop. That allowed us a break in between...

End the Backwards Book Trend

In recent years, a distressing trend has infected TV shows featuring household interior design. I’m talking, of course, about the display of books backward—pages out—on bookshelves. This must end.

Somehow, this bizarre book-positioning method caught on and became a thing. Normal people, in normal homes, now arrange their books this way.

Why? Some claim they prefer the monotone look of shades of white on a bookshelf to the chaos of multi-hued book spines. Others say they enjoy choosing b...

My Weekend at ICON 2023

This past weekend, I attended and spoke at ICON 48, the science fiction convention in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. What a great time!

Bill Pitcher, me, Tony Penticoff

On Friday night, I spoke at a very imaginative panel on the topic of “Dyson Spheres and other Megastructures in Space.” Tony Penticoff did a marvelous job of monitoring the panel (and making an informative presentation) while Bill Pitcher and I talked about various aspects of these structures. The ten audience members seemed engage...

My Schedule for ICON 2023

If you’re not planning to be in Cedar Rapids, Iowa from October 13-15, consider it. I’m scheduled to appear at ICON, the science fiction convention there. Cedar Rapids means a lot to me—I grew up in that city.

Here’s my schedule for that weekend:

Friday

9 pm               Dyson-Sphere – Megastructures in Space (with Bill Pitcher and Tony Penticoff)

Saturday

9 am               Embracing Technology Isn’t Only For The Young (with Michael Frasca)

11 am             Author Meet a...

7 Things I Wish I’d Known When I Started Writing

When you see books for sale online or in stores, do you ever fantasize about seeing your name on the cover as the author? Decades ago, before I began writing fiction, I pictured that and wondered, “how hard can it be?”

Beginner Me, Current Me

At that time, I had a great story idea and estimated I’d achieve bestseller status in a year or two. Many facts about writing remained unknown to me then, things I wish someone had told me. Today, I’ll tell you.

Make Characters Appealing. To Beginn...