Stephen L. Thompson's Blog, page 9

Random Writing Tips ��� Clich�� timing

��Imagine this story.�� One of the main characters is traveling tosome castle and comes across a woman.�� Wethe audience know that she is the other main character, the Queen who was travellingamongst her people and got lost, or something.��They start heading to the castle, and have some adventures on the way,and the Queen falls for the other character.��She finally works up the courage to tell

Random Writing Tips – Cliché timing

 Imagine this story.  One of the main characters is traveling tosome castle and comes across a woman.  Wethe audience know that she is the other main character, the Queen who was travellingamongst her people and got lost, or something. They start heading to the castle, and have some adventures on the way,and the Queen falls for the other character. She finally works up the courage to tell

My writing goals for 2023

 One of my writinggoals for 2021, which carried over to 2022, will carry over to 2023.  That’s to finally finish, and publish, mycollection of fifty stories about writing, The Uncapped Pen.  I am nearly done with it.  There’re one or two stories that are about90% done, and the entire thing needs a good polish, or two.  But my goal is to finish it up and get itout, hopefully by April.  Last

Writing Newsletter Fourth Quarter 2022

 In the last three months,I’ve posted the short stories “The Message” and “A Dragon Named Bob.”I also posted a haiku onTwitter, as well as one on Mastodon.  Inmy last newsletter, I said I hadn’t posted any stories.  While true, I forgot that I had posted anotherhaiku on Twitter during those months.  I’ve also reposted thestory “Tricked,” “A Snowball’s Chance,” and “Revenge.”#Over a year ago,

Random Writing Tips – Take a challenge

 The way to get better atwriting is to write.  But just writing “Iwill be a better writer” a million times won’t make you a better writer.  You need to try new things.  And since this will be posted in lateDecember, why not start the new year with some challenge.  (Of course, if you come across this post inMarch, you don’t have to wait until the following January to try something new.)  If

Free story idea – By Petep’s Boulder

I have a lot of ideas forstories.  Like, if I wrote a novel’sworth of them every month, I’d still most likely die before getting throughthem all.  I will admit that some of theideas probably suck, but I think there are some that a good writer could makesomething of them.  I’ll just never get achance to.  So, I give them to theworld.  If you can make something ofthese, go right ahead.  And

Election Day Sale

Several years ago,I started having Election Day sales for my collection of short stories of apolitical nature, Political Pies.  Forthe last few sales, I’ve also included a few other of my books.  The main reason I do this is it’s me doing a tiny,tiny, tiny, tiny part of hopefully getting people to vote.  The idea being you can download some of mybooks for free so you have something to read

Free story idea – Body parts

I have a lot of ideas forstories.  Like, if I wrote a novel’sworth of them every month, I’d still most likely die before getting throughthem all.  I will admit that some of theideas probably suck, but I think there are some that a good writer could makesomething of them.  I’ll just never get achance to.  So, I give them to theworld.  If you can make something ofthese, go right ahead.  And

Writing Newsletter Third Quarter 2022

 In the last three monthsI haven’t published any new stories or reposted any old ones.  I haven’t been doing muchwriting these last few months, mostly because it seems like every time I think I’llspend Tuesday writing, I wake up Tuesday remembering that I need to pickbeans, or corn, or dig potatoes, or clean out the chicken coop.  Things I can’t really put off for later, andwhen I do sit

Free story idea – A new mythology

I have a lot of ideas forstories.  Like, if I wrote a novel’sworth of them every month, I’d still most likely die before getting throughthem all.  I will admit that some of theideas probably suck, but I think there are some that a good writer could makesomething of them.  I’ll just never get achance to.  So, I give them to theworld.  If you can make something ofthese, go right ahead.  And