Terry Shames's Blog: 7 Criminal Minds, page 29

What’s So Funny, Writing Humor 101, by Josh Stallings

 

Q:  Action, comedy, dialogue, sex, or violence - which of these do you find the most difficult to write and why?

A: Disclaimer, none of these are easy when you start out, or they weren’t for me. 

My first book was the beginning of the Moses trilogy, those books were set in the sex as commerce world, starting with strip clubs and legal brothels, then dealing with international sex trafficking, not a subject widely discussed at the time. The final book dealt with underage American citizens being tr...

Let's talk about sex, baybee, by Catriona

Action, comedy, dialogue, sex, or violence - which of these do you find the most difficult to write and why?

Sorry for the earwom, by the way. First, I present the quotes I picked out for my latest bookmark:

Next, let me say that these five options - action, comedy, dialogue, sex and violence - are probably the easiest bunch of all for me, compared with what the QotW doesn't address: back story, description and passage of time to name but three. Passage of time is unbelievably pesky: you never wan...

Yes, yes, yes, yes... NO! by Eric Beetner

 Action, comedy, dialogue, sex, or violence - which of these do you find the most difficult to write and why?

I love writing dialogue. I love writing violence. I've been told I write comedy very well, and action is my wheelhouse. I love all of it. Sex scenes....well...

I've tried them, sparingly. Sometimes it's needed for the story. After all, it's a huge part of human existence. You can't ignore it. But to get too detailed about it, for me, feels icky. Maybe it's because those just aren't the boo...

Every Writer Has An Achilles Heel

 

Action, comedy, dialogue, sex, or violence - which ofthese do you find the most difficult to write and why?

 

I think of writers as a crossbetween the court jester and Achilles. The court’s entertainer regales thecourt, and he has full immunity. No topic is denied. The Greek hero is a fearlesswarrior, invulnerable, except for his heel because his mother had not coveredit when she dipped her infant son into the waters of the river Styx.

 

Writers, like the joker,jugg...

The Fun Parts of Writing

 Q: Action, comedy, dialogue, sex, or violence - which of these do you find the most difficult to write and why?

from Susan

 

I like writing dialogue the most, and humor finds its way into my work without my pushing it. Happily, reviewers agree that’s kind of a given with my books – not joke humor but mostly a sly side-eye at human behavior. Dialogue seems easy to me because I write like I think (see side-eye) and I hear dialogue as conversation first. The only thing I have to do in edits is get ri...

Advice, shmadvice - for my younger self, by Harini Nagendra

Here's an interesting prompt - state how long you’ve been writing, and what advice would you give to your younger self before you turned professional?If you ask most writers, I think they will tell you that they always wrote - or at least, always told stories, as long as they could remember. Even if, sometimes, the story was narrated to an audience of just one - themselves. My earliest memory of story-telling is probably a very Indian story, that too of an Indian who grew up in the 1970s, in an ...

Half of What You Think You Don’t Know from James W. Ziskin

How long you’ve been writing, and what advice would you give to your younger self before you turned professional?
I have been writing seriously for about twenty years now. But before that, I wrote off and on for decades. That’s right, decades. As I’ve posted in this space before, I banged out my first novel on a portable blue Royal typewriter at the age of twelve. One hundred and ten perfectly fine sheets of paper ruined.
But I knew I wanted to be a writer even then, so I kept plugging away. Each ...

Guest Post by John Lansing

This week I asked my good friend and terrific author John Lansing to drop by and do a guest post. John's the author of the highly rated Jack Bertolino series. His new novel Mia has just been released, it's highly recommended, and you can check out his website for more details. 

State how long you've been writing, and what advice would you give to your younger self before you turned professional?

I was a late-comer to writing. I had already spent about 20 years as a working actor. Life happens, an...

Retro Advice

 

Terry here, answering our question of the week: State how long you’ve been writing, and what advice would you give to your younger self before you turned professional? 
Believe it or not, at one time I was trying to decide whether to become a professional singer or a writer. I’d always considered myself a writer, but I also loved to sing. What made the decision for me was that I realized that singing required a lot more ambition than I had. I honestly don’t know how singers manage to become well...

You've Been Writing How Long?

State how long you’ve been writing, and what advice would you give to your younger self before you turned professional?

Brenda
Odd timing - I did a bookstore signing last weekend and at least three people asked how long I'd been writing. I answered that my first published book came out in 2004, so I've been published for 20 years and released my 25th book this past spring. But I'd been writing for years before 'turning professional' in 2004, if the release of that first book marks the official dat...