Amy Laurens's Blog, page 64
May 28, 2018
How To Theme: Chapter Five – Finding Themes Part 2
Welcome to How To Theme, chapters posting Tuesday/Thursday weekly, available now for pre-order in print, in ebook, and on Amazon. All chapters are also up on Patreon, including the bonus information on genre-specific themes that’s in the final book, but won’t be appearing here on the blog.
The other helpful thing to do is to look for key moments of failure and triumph for the character, and try to figure out why they failed or succeeded.
In Harry Potter, the darkest mome...
May 27, 2018
Made It Monday: THESE ARE A FEW OF MY FAVOURITE THINGS
Welcome to #MadeItMonday, where I post something I’ve made in the previous week, and where you can join in and post something you made too! The rules are easy: post a pic somewhere of something you’ve made in the last week (ish; let’s say in the last month as the hard-and-fast) and tag it. Sit back and enjoy scrolling through all the beautiful things we’ve collectively created, and celebrate the fact that humans can be awesome! 
May 23, 2018
How To Theme: Part Five – Finding Themes Part 1
Welcome to How To Theme, chapters posting Tuesday/Thursday weekly, available now for pre-order in print, in ebook, and on Amazon. All chapters are also up on Patreon, including the bonus information on genre-specific themes that’s in the final book, but won’t be appearing here on the blog.
So you know now that one way to find the themes of a text is to look for ‘quotable’ bits, and another way is to see if it’s stated in the ending somewhere. But what do you do if the th...
May 22, 2018
Sick + Update
I’ve been sick since Friday a week and a half ago, and as of writing this, the plague shows no signs of abating. If by some miracle I’m well on Wednesday when this goes live, I might swap it out for a ‘real’ post, but for now, just touching base to say hi, here I am, be-plagued and coughing up my lungs, but still alive.
I’m *nearly* done with the peak marking season for this semester (hopefully *am* done by the time this posts?), which means I can get back to writing When Worlds Collide (Sanc...
May 21, 2018
How To Theme: Chapter Four – Theme In Fables Part 2
Welcome to How To Theme, chapters posting Tuesday/Thursday weekly, available now for pre-order in print, in ebook, and on Amazon. All chapters are also up on Patreon, including the bonus information on genre-specific themes that’s in the final book, but won’t be appearing here on the blog.
Okay, so that’s the story,* for those of you who haven’t heard it before or needed a refresher.
* I mean sort of. The shape of it is right. I probably might have, um, embellished a few...
May 20, 2018
Made It Monday: Vegetable Muffins – A Kid-Approved Snack
Welcome to #MadeItMonday, where I post something I’ve made in the previous week, and where you can join in and post something you made too! The rules are easy: post a pic somewhere of something you’ve made in the last week (ish; let’s say in the last month as the hard-and-fast) and tag it. Sit back and enjoy scrolling through all the beautiful things we’ve collectively created, and celebrate the fact that humans can be awesome!
May 17, 2018
Professional Mermen For A Day – #Mermay!
So #Mermay is a Thing, in case you weren’t aware: for the month of May, artists of all stripes get together and create mermaid-themed stuff, and if you want to, there’s a daily prompt you can play along with as well. So, in keeping with the #Mermay theme (since I even managed to do a cake on theme and everything!), here’s an insight into what it takes to be a professional merman 
May 16, 2018
How To Theme: Chapter Four – Theme In Fables Part 1
Welcome to How To Theme, chapters posting Tuesday/Thursday weekly, available now for pre-order in print, in ebook, and on Amazon. All chapters are also up on Patreon, including the bonus information on genre-specific themes that’s in the final book, but won’t be appearing here on the blog.
Chapter Four Part 2
I’m going to give you a quick exercise I use in class to teach this. It involves reading a short fable, and then telling me what the moral of the story is. (In fact, if you grew up...
May 15, 2018
How To Write Dogs: The 33 Worst Mistakes Writers Make When They Write About Dogs
You may have noticed, if you’re an astute, noticey sort of person, that the cover for How To Theme lists the series as Inkprint Writers #2. Number two? you say (assuming you’re one of the astute noticey people). But what happened to number one?!
BEHOLD. NUMBER ONE.
Previously The 33 Worst Mistakes Writers Make About Dogs (because that was the series it was initially written for – the Write It Right series of ‘The 33 Worst Mistakes Writers Make About…’), the book has been retitled and recovere...
May 14, 2018
How To Theme: Chapter Three – Quotes Are Usually Themes
Welcome to How To Theme, chapters posting Tuesday/Thursday weekly, available now for pre-order in print, in ebook, and on Amazon. All chapters are also up on Patreon, including the bonus information on genre-specific themes that’s in the final book, but won’t be appearing here on the blog.
Chapter Three
Okay, so now that we’ve established the groundwork, we can get down to the nitty-gritty of why you’re actually here: figuring out what theme is.
I said at the end of chapter one that people...
