Lessons Learned from Writing and Finishing my First Book
No one is born knowing how to write a book. Sadly. So when you write your first one, it’s a huge learning experience. It’s cathartic. It’s painful. It’s a big confusing mess at times. But it’s also an enormous relief when you finish it. When you do finish writing your...
How to Tackle Your First Draft of a Novel (without setting it on fire)
You’ve written your first draft of your novel, wooo! It’s a huge accomplishment, really. I hope you know that. Writing a novel, even if it’s an absolute dumpster fire of a draft, is HARD. But what next? You’ll no doubt have friends or family telling you to immediately...
How to Deal with New Ideas While Writing Your Novel
New ideas are great. They’re certainly better than no ideas at all. But if you get new ideas while writing, AFTER you've plotted and written a lot of your novel, they can be disruptive and frustrating. I’m a mix when it comes to plotting. Sometimes I’ll plot...
Can Fiction Writers Become Copywriters?
You just love writing, right? You dream of being able to earn a way of living that involves writing and being creative and free. And best of all, this is possible in a few ways. Some options include, journalism, technical writing, copywriting, and even fiction...
How to Write About Time in Your Fantasy Novel
Time is probably not what you think about when it comes to designing your fantasy world. However, time determines a whole lot in the world and it’s something worth thinking about. How do we measure time? This was something that hadn’t occurred to me when I set out to...
Food in Fantasy: Adding Flavour to Fantasy Worldbuilding
During this global pandemic, the availability of food has been on my mind a lot. Among many other things of course, but food is often on my mind anyway. With panic buying (I know half of you aren’t even using that flour to make bread so put it back), disruptions in...
How to Structure a Novel: 6 Story Structures to Try
So you want to write a novel? Welcome to hell. Not really, writing a novel can be a lot of fun but it is far from easy. If it was easy, all those people who say everyone has a novel in them would have written one by now. It’s hard to know where to start, but that’s...
Fantasy Worldbuilding Mistakes That Stop Your World Feeling Real
If you’re new to worldbuilding or are struggling with the massive task of building an entire world from scratch, it can be an overwhelming process. It's easy to make some common mistakes while worldbuilding. So, this post will highlight which ones I see most often so...
5 Ideas On What To Blog About as a Fiction Writer
If you’re a fiction writer and keep hearing people like me say GET A BLOG for god sake, then you might be taken aback and stuck. What the hell do you blog about? As an unpublished author no less. The good thing is you don’t have to wait until you’re published. In...
What We Can Take From Travel Inspiration When Writing Fantasy
So, your first question may be – what the hell has travelling in this world got to do with the fantasy world I’m building from scratch? Can you really use travel inspiration when writing when your novel is set in a world that doesn't really exist? Well, I firmly...
Society and Governments in Fantasy Worlds
If you are building an entire world from scratch for your fantasy novel(s), then there are lots of big-picture things to think about. One of those things is the overall society structure and types of governments in your fantasy world. The chances are that there will...
Top Tropes in Fantasy to Avoid If You Want a Unique Story
Tropes appear in all genres of course. We couldn’t get to the year 2020 without a few things getting repeated over the years. Tropes in fantasy and cliches aren’t necessarily a bad thing in themselves. Things are repeated and become cliche because a lot of people tend...