Amy Laurens's Blog, page 87
December 28, 2016
Dr Who Christmas Special – Doctor Mysterio
I literally just this minute finished watching this year’s Dr Who Christmas special, and I am filled with hope! I’ve been pretty keen on New Who since my sister introduced me to it back in 2009, but the last couple of seasons… Eh. If we’d been staring down the barrel of another mediocre-ish season, I might have stood a very good chance at falling out of love with it all. I mean, don’t get me wrong, there have been some great episodes: Heaven Sent (spoilers in link) is one of my absolute favou...
December 22, 2016
How to Change the World in 2017
Look, 2016 has been a pretty crappy year in a lot of ways, and a lot of us are concerned (to say the least) about what 2017 will bring. The world is changing, and not always in positive ways. As a global human society, we’ve made a lot of progress towards universal respect in the last hundred or so years, and things are happening all around the globe that threaten this progress. The thing about progress is that it’s always a battle: we’re fighting entropy.
This, relatedly, is my line sometime...
December 21, 2016
Free Creepy Short Story On Darkness & Good!
It’s my turn to post a free short story to the Darkness&Good blog again this week. This is an older story, because I freely confess that I’m spending every inch of my writing time trying to finish my novel Fox Red so I can release it next year, but you’ll enjoy it 
November 29, 2016
Over 40 Free Stories! An Anthology of Stories for Teen Readers
YOU GUYS IT’S NEARLY HOLIDAYS. This, my friends, is a Very Exciting Thing. It also means that hopefully you’ll get some more regularly scheduled blogging – and I’m going to do my level best to set up some sort of blogging system that will work to keep things happening regularly throughout 2017, I promise .<
BUT! IN THE MEANTIME! FREEEEEEE STOOOOORIEEEEEEESS!!
First of all, I have another short up on the Darkness&Good blog this week. It’s an extract from my work in progress, Fox Red. If you’re...
<November 15, 2016
New Story on Darkness and Good
Hey there,
Just a short post to let you know that I have something up on Darkness&Good this week – a poem, actually, that I wrote on the way home from the US last month.
Love you. Stay safe.
A
October 23, 2016
Plotting #3: Case Study – How Not To Take Over The World
Way, way back when I was a very newbie writer and had never completed more than the very occasional short story, I was part of a critique group on Critique Circle. We went through a stage of doing weekly short story challenges that actually started as a way to teach me specifically how to write short stories, because everything I wrote turned into a giant ramble. (Which is not always a bad thing, but I wanted to learn the shor...
October 21, 2016
Plotting #5: It’s A Wrap
Whoa, day 5 of plotting! So pretty much all I’m going to do today is provide a quick wrap-up, including an overview of the main points discussed in yesterday’s video. If you haven’t had a chance to watch it, besides the live demo of actually fixing the plot of HNOT, here are the key ideas we discussed:
1) Amy says ‘really’ too much.2) Post-it notes are an awesome tool for visualising the plot of your n...
October 19, 2016
Plotting #4: Live Replot
Today, the climax this has all been building towards. A couple of weeks ago I was super excited to able to visit Liana in Alaska (!!!!), and while I was there, Much Plotting Occurred. We plotted 6 novel/las that week, I think, mostly mine, and plotting so many stories in such a short space of time was *really* beneficial for my plotting skills. As well as the simple repetition of skills, it was also amazing to stick ev...
October 18, 2016
One Bad Man – New Darkness&Good Short Story
Reminder that the Darkness&Good free (unedited) short story blog is functioning again now that we’ve added author Thea van Diepen to our ranks, woohoo!
Today is part of my Russian steampunk assassin story, One Bad Man 
October 17, 2016
Plotting #2: Beat Sheets
Okay, so, yesterday I confessed to you my secret nightmare as a writer: structure. Not because I resent being constrained by arbitrary rules or whatever, but because actually, after reading a crap-tonne of new-writer stories in the last ten years, I have a healthy appreciation for a well-structured story and I’m *just* *not* *GOOD* at it myself. Which, URGH. I’m an English teacher and a writer and I have *experience* with these things and I read...
