Scarlett Van Dijk's Blog, page 5

Guest Post: George Kramer - The Arcadis Series

My name is George Kramer and I have written all my life, but I have been writing fantasy only for a year and a half. I am currently writing the fifth book in the Arcadis series with the first two available for purchase on amazon and createspace.
I am a voracious reader, but had never read any science fantasy until last year. After reading several books I said to myself, "I can do that." And I did!

A brief summary of my first two fantasy books are:
Arcadis: Prophecy

In the beginning of the sorce...

Vignette - Vigilante Love

Here's another scene that I wrote as part of a Google+ competition for fun. The idea was to start with the line in the picture below, 'There are few things in the world that frighten me more than...' It was fun to write this and once again in a different genre than I'm used to. Almost apocalyptic, futurist stuff with guns. I like this quite a bit and am considering writing a little more. We'll see...

These prompts are a great way to hone my writing skills and try new things. I suggest all writ...

Guest Post: Alan Wallach - Kieran and the Weird Window

It's sometimes very strange how things evolve. About fifteen years ago, my nine year old grandson , Ian, came to live with us because my son and daughter-in-law were getting divorced and he didn't want to live with either of them. One day, this nine year old asked me to help him write a book, which I agreed to do.We worked on it for a couple of weeks and finally finished one chapter, Then, thank heaven, he lost interest. Try collaborating with a nine year old. Fast forward, fourteen years. My...

Guest Post: Samantha Bryant - Reclaiming the Cape

I love superhero stories. They appeal to my imagination and my sense of fun. They are so full of the wonder of “what if?” What if you could see through walls? What if you could fly? What if you were super-strong? I’ve read comics and watched superhero shows and movies all my life. I consume the high and low brow, the full gamut of production values. The Avengers down to the Toxic Avenger.

As a child of the 70s and 80s, I loved Wonder Woman, Charlie’s Angels, Batman and Robin, Shazam, The Hu...

Guest Post: Vanessa Wells - Yes, You CAN Afford an Editor!

Part of my business as a freelance editor, proofreader and indexer is educating people about why they need an editor and how they can hire one more affordably than they think.

Why didn’t we see that error or typo in our writing before we clicked on Send? It’s almost inevitable. You need a fresh pair of eyes. Proofreaders are trained to catch those mistakes and save you embarrassment: I recently proofread a 281-page book with typos on 30 them. Unfortunately, it was already published… [Proofrea...

Oh, But My Lovelies!

Editing is the monster under the bed for many writers. It’s not fun for the most part. The first time I read through a new manuscript of mine I think, “Wow! I wrote all that?! YES!” Then I go back for the 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th…. You get the gist. Every time I read through my work I see more mistakes, I find another plot hole, and I find paragraphs of useless wordsmithing which I know must be deleted.

This is one of the hardest parts of editing for me. I feel like I worked so hard on this master...

Guest Post: Justin M Sloan - Publishing Your Fantasy as a Serial

Generally when we think of fantasy novels, we think of epic volumes similar to the 1500 page Brandon Sanderson novels or the 14 book Wheel of Time series by Robert Jordan (later taken over by Brandon Sanderson). So when I wrote my first draft of Falls of Redemption several years ago and it came out to 160,000 words (roughly 600 pages), I thought I was off to a good start. I was keeping it short-ish, since this is recommended for new authors, and yet it was long enough to meet the standards of...

Guest Post: Grier Cooper - How to Hurtle Past Writer's Block

During a recent interview I was asked what I do if I get writer's block. At the time I didn't have an answer because it had never happened to me; writing had always come easily, although some days more easily than others. But a few months later–after I put my first young adult novel out in the world–I suddenly found myself either staring at a blank page or feeling like I was squeezing words out drop by drop.

What had changed? I asked myself. It wasn't an issue of process; I'd already written s...

Dating A Writer 101

You may imagine that writers are similar to any other person when it comes to dating. You probably believe that we’re just artsy people who like to read a lot. Well that is true but that is not all that we are. Remember… don’t judge a book by it’s cover.

We zone out a lot
We’re daydreamers. Where do you suppose our stories come from? Our heads are filled with many different worlds where we can escape to, as we then to often do.

We’re possessive of our stationary
Do not move our pens! We hav...

Guest Post: Glenn Hefley - Complex Empathy

Have you ever been good at something without knowing how? ‘How’ is the right question because you know why you’re good. You’re good because you stay up all night working, and re-working scene after scene. You’re good because editing is something that you have to do. It just has to be right. The ‘why’ is easy, though it would be embarrassing if people knew how much effort you had to put into a short story to be this good.

I began writing with just enough grammar knowledge to know a subject, ve...