Articles/Ideas/Prompts - Short Fiction - Poetry - Short Non-Fiction - Writing Exercises

This is a list of ten things you can look forward to here on this blog over the coming year. I've been planning quite a few workshops and things to do around here to make life more interesting. I've also been debating making a forum for these workshops. Anyone who would be willing to help me run it should contact me at diannalgunn@gmail.com about it.

Here are some things you can expect to see:

1. Early Releases Of Ebooks Bleed and Myths of Tamraq will both be announced here before anywhere else. I will also be releasing a couple free PDFs of myths. A Cutter's Journey will be announced here and on its own website a week before I go to any of my regular forums and places to announce it.

2. Nanowrimo World-Building Workshop This will be a two week workshop, with a half hour exercise every day. You can expect things like building a God, building a religion, looking at architecture, looking at weather, culture, and art. It will be run in the second week and second last week of October.

3. Nanowrimo Pep Talks I will be doing a weekly pep talk for Nanowrimo once again on this blog this year, because I had lots of fun last year. I'll also be looking for a couple other Nanoers and asking them to do guest post pep talks.

4. Dear Diary Workshop This will be going on next February. I will be doing my own Dear Diary, and each day have a list of questions to consider when writing your own. More on this later, when I have a proper 'course' outline type of thing.

5. World-Building Workshop This will be a multi-post workshop, each post focusing on a different part of the world building. There will be two exercises a week. This and the following few workshops already have basic outlines, and I'm seriously considering starting a forum for the different workshops on this blog.

6. Religion-Building Workshop This is another multi-post workshop which will be six weeks long, one exercise per week. It will cover how I usually build my religions and have various questions to ask. One of the exercises will be myth-building.

7. God-Building Workshop The Gods are characters too. This will be a four post workshop, two posts each over two weeks, about how to create a God.

8. Culture-Building Workshop This will be a six week workshop like the Religion one, with exercises focusing on art, myth, music and language.

9. Character-Building Workshop This workshop will be like the others, showing how I develop characters.

10. Plot-Building Workshop This workshop will cover various ways to build plot, including my reviews on two or three different methods and an overview of my own personal method.

These and much more will be coming over the next year. Thinking about it, I will be creating a forum in October which will have sub-forums for each workshop so that people who do the workshops at any time can discuss them.

Thanks for reading,
~Dianna

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Posted By: Dianna G - Category: Updates on Novels, Articles/Ideas/Prompts, Short Fiction, Poetry, Short Non-Fiction, Writing Exercises

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Developing Your Voice

July 8th 2009 23:20

I often see writers on various forums asking the same questions. Usually they're questions about things like chapter length, pacing, character building-all those important things. One of the most frequent questions asked isn't specifically about your story though-it's about developing your voice.

Writers ask 'How does one develop their voice?'

And other writers generally answer 'By practicing.'

It's the truth. The only way to really develop your voice as a writer is by writing. You have to experiment; learn what forms of writing you're comfortable with-novels, novellas, short stories, poetry. You have to figure out what genres you like to write in-again, something you can only really learn by trying different ones. You have to figure out what PoVs are comfortable for you: first, second, third.

All of these things you can only learn by writing. Most of us, when we start writing, emulate our favourite writers to varying degrees-some of us do it consciously, and for some of us it just sort of happens. Over time we break away from these emulations and develop our own writing style, which usually still has some influence from our favourite writers but which has become unique, distinct to us.

To develop your voice, you should write, write, and write some more. Try some prompts, some exercises. Try to stretch yourself throughout various genres. Try playing with different chapter lengths. Different viewpoints. Experiment. Try writing flash fiction and try writing novels. Figure out what works for you.

As you write more and more your own distinct voice will begin to come out of the words, out onto paper. You will develop a certain way of saying things, a certain speed at which you usually say them. Some of us end up with flowery voices-Anne Rice-and others end up with brutal, working-man voices-Stephen King-but most of us are somewhere in the middle.

We all have our own voice. It's not really about developing it, it's about finding it and learning to use it properly.

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Posted By: Dianna G - Category: Updates on Novels, Articles/Ideas/Prompts, Short Fiction, Poetry, Short Non-Fiction, Writing Exercises

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Learning

January 17th 2009 03:52

Writing is in large part a learning process. A writer needs to be open to new things; this is why we have classes and workshops and books about writing. Not all things will work for you, this is true. We're all different. You probably won't find a class that's absolutely perfect for you. A method won't always work.

But if you don't try new things, how can you possibly know? Everything changes; our writing should too. Let's take the example of a well known author, JK Rowling of the Harry Potter series.

People change and grow as readers as well as writers. Though as a child they delighted me, I can't read the first four books of this series anymore; I've grown to a point where they seem dull to me. The writing isn't bad, necessarily, but it isn't as compelling as later books.

JK's writing grows. While her ideas are great, her writing was only mediocre at the beginning; I can understand to an extent why she collected over thirty rejections before finding a publisher for her books.

The seventh book is dark, it's intense; you just can't put it down. You can tell she's grown as a writer by the way she tells the story. It doesn't feel like it's designed for children anymore, or even young adults. With the sixth and seventh book she truly crosses age groups, and this is what all books hopefully will do.

If you're thinking about taking a class, do it; you never know what you might pick up. If you're thinking about trying a new genre, try it. Only with practice, feedback, and experimenting do we grow better as writers.

Of course, this goes into the outside world as well. Our writing is enriched by the experiences we've had, by the things we go through each day. We become better at writing not only with practice and feedback, and experiments in the writing world, but by changing ourselves and trying new things in our own world. By seeing more in life, we can draw on more when building our worlds and when writing in the one we live in.

Try something new; maybe it will work for you, maybe it won't. But that experience may very well provide you with an idea for a great story. The experience of seeing your first real taste of a new culture may give you a little detail to add more depth to your world. It's not guaranteed-but it's more likely that you'll get an idea by doing something than by sitting around on your butt.

Learn something new today. Read about someone else's writing process. Sign up for a writing class. Try a new sport. Read about a new culture. Plan a trip if you can, somewhere not too far but where life is different. You'd be surprised how much changes with only a few hours' drive.

Learning helps you with both your writing and your normal life. Writing is a learning process-and as much as we may hate school (I do), writing is more fun to learn about, and you'll never make it any further than where you are already if you don't.

They say we all learn something new every day; maybe we don't really learn something new every day, but we can at least learn something new every month or two. So go Google something you don't know much about, and see where the internet leads you.

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Posted By: Dianna G - Category: Articles/Ideas/Prompts, Short Fiction, Poetry, Short Non-Fiction, Writing Exercises, Articles/Info

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What makes a writer?

December 12th 2008 06:31

I've gone over this before, but I was reading a thread on Forward Motion earlier and it's been a while, so I felt like writing about this topic.

What makes a writer in my mind is someone who loves to write. Someone who can't help themselves; they just need to do it like most people need to breath. Writing is a passion, writing is a love; when the going gets tough we still keep going. Writers love to do what they do, and are willing to work at it

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Posted By: Dianna G - Category: Articles/Ideas/Prompts, Short Fiction, Poetry, Short Non-Fiction, Writing Exercises

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When Everything Is Just Too Much

October 4th 2008 23:28

So let me tell you something. School is stressing me out; I'm trying to force myself to go but it isn't working very well. Things at home aren't pleasant either. I'm stressed; so stressed that I've been sick on and off for two weeks now. Nanowrimo is on the horizon.

It's times like these when anybody-writer or otherwise-starts to wonder about all their obligations and if they're worth it. It's times like these when normally I would abandon the blog for weeks at a time; I'm trying not to. It's sort of working. It's times like these when we just want to throw in the towel

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Posted By: Dianna G - Category: Articles/Ideas/Motivation, Articles/Ideas/Prompts, Short Fiction, Poetry, Short Non-Fiction, Writing Exercises, Articles/Info

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