Vocabulary is a writer’s best friend. Mine is sadly lacking. (My grammar is worse, but my vocab list is pretty short.) So! Here’s a word to think about today, maybe use it somewhere if it’s useful. “The cadence of her footsteps on the marble flooring heralded trouble on the way.” Cadence: noun 1) a : […]
Ah, characters. The good guys. The bad guys. The goofy sidekicks. The random passerby in the background. These are the bread and butter of the storyworld, the main staple that feeds the craft. They don’t always have to be human in some medium to still get the stories across and there can be stories without […]
I found this great article, “What Makes a Really Good Story?” by Ted Albrighton, that looks at storytelling through the lens of commercial use. You don’t often think about commercials as “stories” because, in theory, you know they’re trying to sell you something, not to entertain you. Stories come with this connotation that they are […]
Coffee is a necessary evil. (And, horrifyingly enough, it is subject to the whims of the climate just like every other food supply.) Sure, there’s always tea, but it’s just not the same. Coffee and writing go hand in hand for me, no matter the time of day. Coffee is the most important thing […]
I’ve been writing for as long as I can remember and still find writing letters that begin “To whom it may concern” very tedious. It’s not very engaging wordplay. It’s boring. It’s a business-world casualty hit to the writing voice. But there it is, because formula is sometimes important. However, this is the emerging world […]
I am brand new at blogging. Sure, I’ve been on the internet since the dawn of time. (Okay, not actually that long, but I once ran up a $100 AOL dial-up bill, and I can imitate the sound of a modem.) I have done my turn on Twitter, and Livejournal, and Facebook, and tumblr, and […]
The Writer’s Digest is just a treasure trove. I love them. Thanks to student loans, my subscription has lapsed, but they still have the online offerings!!! I found a few, so I’ll share what I liked in the hopes of remembering them later. 😉 How to Create Your Own Bad Guys and Sleazy Protagonists This […]
So this writing thing. It turns out it’s hard to do. It takes a toll. I’m not complaining, mind you, just making the observation. I have been working on multiple projects, one after the other more than all at once, since September. I’ve discovered I’m not good at multitasking on projects. None of the writing […]
This weekend, I went on a Percy Jackson binge. After watching Percy Jackson and the Lightning Thief, I dragged my friend to see Percy Jackson: Sea of Monsters. I didn’t like the writing in the books well enough to read past the first installment, but I do like the movies. The books are “young adult” […]
It has been decided – by me, of course, because I own this particular digital neighborhood – that I shall wander into the over-heated world of reviews. Book and movie reviews. Why would I do this? What gives me the right to opinionate on someone else’s hard work? I’m not published, after all, I have […]
The Coffee Writer 