Steven R. Southard's Blog, page 69

Just Your (Writing) Style

Style is one of the five fundamental elements of fiction, along with character, plot, setting, and theme. It’s also the most difficult of the five to explain or understand.

I like to start my blog posts by defining terms, but this time I’ll let the definition of style emerge as we go. For now, I’ll say that every author writes differently, with certain identifying characteristics. In theory, if we took a sufficient random sample of any single author’s writing, we could identify the author by t...

Dreaming of Success

Do you fantasize about being a best-selling author? If so, what form does your daydreaming take? Are you being interviewed by a famous talk-show host? Receiving a call from someone in Hollywood who wants to turn your story into a movie? Throwing a huge book launch party? Swimming through money in your mansion’s vault?

Today’s ramblings are about whether your Walter Mitty-type flights of fancy are helpful or harmful.

First of all, I think such dreaming is normal. It’s typical when a person embar...

8 Useful Facts about Copyrighting Your Short Story

Sure, I know, you’re an author and you don’t want to have to bother with all that legal stuff like copyrighting. You just want to write. You don’t understand that funny little symbol (©), and you hate that your word processor comes up with it when you type (c). You’ve landed at the right blog post. I’ll make this easy.

First the necessary disclaimer. I’m no lawyer, let alone a copyright attorney. For the best legal advice, hire or befriend one of them.

Definition time. What’s a copyright? It’s...

Interview with the Adjective Expert

Recently I had the honor of interviewing Amber Wise Savage, President of the English Language Adjective Council (ELAC).* Following is the entire text of that interview:

Poseidon’s Scribe: First of all, Amber, welcome to the world of Poseidon’s Scribe and thank you for consenting to this exclusive interview.

Amber Wise Savage: You’re most welcome, and many thanks for the superb opportunity.

PS: Let’s start with the basics. Please tell us about adjectives.

AWS: I’d be happy to. Adjectives are descr...

Cliché Okay, or So Passé?

Every writer tells you to purge clichés from your prose (and I will too), but then those same writers go ahead and use clichés in their own books. Sadly, I have too. That’s not due to intentional hypocrisy; it’s just that the nasty critters are so darn hard to eradicate.

What’s a cliché? It’s an overused expression or phrase. Before becoming a cliché, the short collection of words started out being clever. The original author discovered a compact, understandable, shorthand way of stating an id...

FAQs About My Latest Book

Ever since I’ve been dropping hint after hint about my upcoming book (Rallying Cry and Last Vessel of Atlantis), questions have been pouring in. Flooding in. Give me a break, I’m drowning here! More questions came in than I could answer individually.

So I paid for some time on a supercomputer that compiled all the questions, sorted them, combined similar ones, performed complex statistical analyses, and spit out a list of the most frequently asked questions.

Below are those FAQs, complete with...

Technical Difficulties

I know I said my latest book, the two-story compendium of “Rallying Cry” and “Last Vessel of Atlantis,” would be released today, March 1st. I’ve just been informed that due to circumstances beyond anyone’s control, the book launch will be delayed a few days, perhaps as much as a week.

My many fans around the world, and on other planets, and those in alternate universes (I know you’re out there and that you read my stuff) must be disappointed. I assure you, no one is more distressed about this...

But I Didn’t Order Spam

When I started this blog three years ago, I imagined people would view it, and comments would start pouring in. I’m pleased to report the comments are pouring in, at a total of more than 37,000 so far. The bad news is, all but 73 are spam. Of the 73, only 42 are comments from other people, the remainder being my responses.

What is this spam that constitutes 99.8% of the comments I receive? It’s a comment not intended to respond to my blog post at all, but rather to create a link back to the sp...

What Everyone’s Waiting For

Everybody’s talking about it. It’s all over the internet, crashing servers with the added traffic. Social media sites are abuzz about it. You can feel the pervasive air of excitement and anticipation.

Calm down, world. It’s just my next book. You’re going to have to wait until the release date of March 1 to buy it.

Actually, it’s two stories in one e-book release, a two-fer. “Rallying Cry” and “Last Vessel of Atlantis” are paired together. What are these stories about? Thought you’d never ask.

I...

It’s All You, Dave

Remember ‘Dave’ from the Staples™ TV commercial from a few years ago? The guy walked into an office where everyone looked suspiciously like him, and they all greeted each other by saying, “Dave.” The commercial closed with the voiceover saying, “In a small business, it’s all you.”

If you’re a writer these days, you’re much like Dave. After all, in your corporation of one, you fill the following positions:

President. Congratulations! You made it to the top, the big cheese, the high muckety-muck....