Stephen L. Thompson's Blog, page 11

Format beast

Recently,I did something that I haven’t done for a couple of years: submitted astory.  Over the years, I’ve learned the basicsubmission format, but since it’s been a while and things change, I’d take mytime and go through the sample this magazine uses.  And I think the only new aspect I saw was thewhole one or two spaces question.  But asI was reading through this format example, it

Free story idea – Dragon sphere

Ihave a lot of ideas for stories.  Like,if I wrote a novel’s worth of them every month, I’d still most likely diebefore getting through them all.  I willadmit that some of the ideas probably suck, but I think there are some that agood writer could make something of them. I’ll just never get a chance to. So, I give them to the world.  Ifyou can make something of these, go right ahead.  And

Voter registration drive and book sale

Itseems every other year here in the US we face an election that WILL DETERMINETHE VERY SURVIVAL OF THE NATION.  Andafter going through this for the last five or six never-ending election cycles,there is a strong desire to just listen to music and play video games.  But to be a buzzkill, elections are importantin that they will determine the intensity of the dumpster fire we end upin.  So

Random Writing Tips – Broken incentives

 Manyyears ago, in an effort to increase my writing output, I set myself a goal of writinga certain number of words each day.  It’sa great idea, but I was rather hit-or-miss on meeting my goal.  So one day I decided to give myself a bit ofan incentive.  I bought a bag of mixedlittle candy bars, and told myself I’d get one whenever I met my goal.  If I wrote twice my goal, I’d get two, and so

Why I’ve never written a trans character

I ama white, heterosexual, cis male who has been writing stories for twenty-fiveishyears.  Back when I started, most of mycharacters were more-or-less versions of me because that’s what I knew.  When you’re just starting out writing, it’s alot easier to stick to what you know. But it wasn’t long before I started writing female characters.  The way I did this was instead of calling my

Random Writing Tips ��� Beware Frankenstein characters

��Severalyears ago, I was designing a character and I kept adding traits: she had aninterest in gladiators, a bit of a mischievous streak, a love of old movies andTV shows, etc., etc.�� It got to the pointwhere I started to wonder if a real person could have all these traits, or if Iwas just stitching different people together like Dr. Frankenstein.�� It���s a problem that often comes up in TV

Random Writing Tips – Beware Frankenstein characters

 Severalyears ago, I was designing a character and I kept adding traits: she had aninterest in gladiators, a bit of a mischievous streak, a love of old movies andTV shows, etc., etc.  It got to the pointwhere I started to wonder if a real person could have all these traits, or if Iwas just stitching different people together like Dr. Frankenstein.  It’s a problem that often comes up in TV

Interact with your audience

I amnot a talkative person.  Even at familygatherings I’ll just sit and listen to other conversations.  The reason I’m bringing this up in a writingblog, is that my quiet nature also applies to social media.  If someone leaves a comment on a tweet, I’llprobably spend a few minutes debating if I should reply.  And the vast majority of the time I don’t.  This can be an issue since one of the

Writing Newsletter Fourth Quarter 2021

 Inthe past three months I’ve republished 3 of my stories.  They are: “Rest in Peace,” “In the Victor’s Footsteps,” and “Memories.”I also published the short story “A Christmas Miracle?”Thingsare a bit less hectic, and I have managed to do some more writing.  Not as much as I want, but more is better.Ithink the only news item is that yesterday I posted my writing goals for 2022.***

My writing goals for 2022

 Well,I didn’t meet any of my writing goals for 2021. I think the main reason being I had too many other things taking up mytime, from work to helping my parents around the house and farm.  Will 2022 be different?  We’ll just have to wait and see.Mymain goal for 2021 was to finish TheUncapped Pen: a collection of fifty stories covering various aspects ofwriting from author’s arguing with