Sandra Harvey's Blog
May 19, 2016
Why Some YA Books are Bad for Teens
I’m back to writing YA again, and as a general rule, when I write YA, I read YA. Young adult novels seem to hog the shelves when you browse a bookstore. They’re great sellers with a wide audience. Not only teenagers read YA. I’m a big fan of the genre, but there are certain messages […]
May 17, 2016
Animals in Stories
A common way to use pets in stories is to get us all emotionally attached to them… and then kill them off. And then we all hate you for it because WHY? How dare you kill off Fido! Pets have been introduced and killed off in nearly every book I’ve read or movie I’ve watched, […]
May 16, 2016
Writing an Intro For YA
I’ve decided to do one more post about this topic, but this time with a YA novel as the example. While I have many, many young adult books lying around, I chose one that I remember had an introduction that stood out to me: The Night Circus, by Erin Morgenstern. I will admit that I […]
May 13, 2016
Writing a Fantasy Novel Intro
So I’ve gone over a few topics concerning high-fantasy novels, but I haven’t really touched upon what makes a great first impression when opening a 900-1200 page novel. Obviously the hook needs to be great for you to invest your time in reading a monster that size. I’d like to bring in The Fellowship of […]
May 10, 2016
Common Sense VS. Science
Who will win out: the scientists who have studied all their lives to solve this world-destroying threat OR this random character with no knowledge of anything who just happens to have a bit of common sense on their side? You guessed it! It’s totally the random character with no background in science. This drives me […]
May 7, 2016
Sky Pirate, Book Two of The Skylands Series
Book two inThe Skylands series and the sequel to Sky Knight will be called Sky Pirate. I was hoping to release the book in April but I was so busy with other projects that Sky Pirate had to be pushed ahead. Now I’m back to fully focusing upon this project until it’s completed. Everything else […]
May 6, 2016
Maps in High Fantasy
I’ve yet to digitally design a map for the high fantasy novel I’m working on, but I’ve started on a rough pencil sketch of it. Truthfully, designing a map takes more thought than some writers realize. You can’t slap a few places together and expect everything to make sense. There are things to consider. Firstly, […]
May 5, 2016
The Journey of Writing Sky Knight
Hey guys! It’s #ThrowbackThursday, and I’ve never contributed to this particular hashtag before, so today I’m going all out with the story of how I wrote Sky Knight, my steampunk/sci-fi novel. I released Sky Knight last year in April, but I originally wrote it in the November of the previous year during National Novel Writing […]
April 26, 2016
Instant Love in Stories
Today I’ll be talking about a common trope in many YA novels. (A trope is, by Google definition, a common or overused theme or device.) Lately I’ve discovered a trope that I often overlooked as a kid, but now it makes my eyes roll. Unless the author purposely makes me roll my eyes, like when […]
January 26, 2016
Over-Explaining a Scene
Let’s talk about heavy explanation in a scene. For example: I saw the light on over the door. It must be my sister, coming home late from the dance. I heard laughter outside, followed by giggling, and then quiet talking. She must be with someone. Her date brought her home, probably. I looked out the […]
