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Articles/Ideas/Prompts Short Non-Fiction Writing Exercises - Fictional Worlds

Quick Survey-Website Building

April 6th 2010 12:11
Hi guys. I hope everyone had a great Easter Weekend. I've been working on building a website in relation to Fictional Worlds, and I've created a very short survey to find out what you would like to see on my website. It's just a couple of questions to help me decide what to put into my website while I'm working on it.

Click here to take the survey

Thanks for reading.
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Reaching Your Goals in 2010: Tips For A Newbie

January 13th 2010 12:45
On the WriYe forums I found a thread from a newbie writer asking for advice. This person has never written a novel before this year. So I got to thinking: what kinds of advice would I give to a newbie writer? I may not be a well known author with dozens of publications under my belt, but I've been writing for about half my lifetime and I like to think that I've learned a fair bit about it throughout the last few years.

So I've come up with a few tips for reaching your writing goals in 2010. These are tips aimed to help the beginner, but they're also good to keep in mind no matter how many years of experience you have. So here goes:

~Experiment with different writing styles, different voices, and different PoVs (Point Of Views) to figure out what works best for you

~Try to write something every day, if not for your story then something to a random prompt

~Never give up; this is your dream, this is what you love, so keep on doing it even if people tell you you suck-people tell me I suck all the time and I keep going, I've been going for years.

~Don't spend extreme amounts of time on character and worldbuilding before you start writing. Get a general sense of your story, your characters, and your setting, and then get a move on; if you do a bunch of work in advance you're probably going to end up having to change it quite a bit.

~Don't edit while you write; you'll start to feel like what you're writing is worthless, you might fall into a depressed rut, and you might just get bogged down in an endless series of edits.

~Find yourself a strong writing community. Look for either a community in your town/city or an online community which you fit into. For friendly, somewhat competitive, goal oriented writers look to WriYe(clicky) or to the Nanowrimo forums.

~Read a lot. Read blogs about writing, blogs about other subjects you're interested in, books of your genre and of any other genre you enjoy reading. Read everything that you can get your hands on and find the time to read. Set yourself a goal of reading at least one book a month for the next year.

~Seriously consider starting a blog. Blogging is a great way to get into and stay in the habit of writing regularly, it allows you to get your thoughts out there, and it's a good way to find readers and even make friends.

What steps am I taking to help me reach my goals? More on that tomorrow.
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One Last Thing To Look Through

October 10th 2009 18:31
The workshop will be starting on Monday, and I will not be posting here tomorrow. I just wanted to give you guys a link to one more useful thing:

The Educated Worldbuilding Guide is a wiki (and a thread on the Nanowrimo Fantasy forum) which has information on different cultures, geography, linguistics and other such useful information.

I want you to spend today and tomorrow reading up on different cultures. Pick up to five to read up on. You'll want to bookmark useful websites for each of these cultures, because we will be coming back to them during the workshop.
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Course Materials/More Thoughts

October 9th 2009 11:59
To participate in this Pre-Nanowrimo course, you're going to need lined paper, graph paper, blank paper, pens, and pencils.

You want to think about what themes you might enjoy exploring in your writing, what kinds of religion you're comfortable writing, what kinds of climates you're comfortable writing in, and what viewpoints you're comfortable with. All great writers will at some point challenge their comfort zones as far as these things go, but your first Nanowrimo (or even your second) is not the time to challenge those comfort zones


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Outlining Wrap-Up

September 23rd 2009 22:19
I couldn't find a suitable method of outlining with full information readily available online for my last review, so I'm just going to wrap up this series.

Outlining is a valuable tool for novel writing. Some writers also use it for short stories and long essays. Some writers like myself prefer a minimal outline, with a few plot details, major conflicts and some character information written down. Others, like Lazette Gifford or the infamous Kateness from Nanowrimo, write intense outlines with word counts that tend to be over ten thousand words


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Recommended Reading Day 3

September 16th 2009 00:33
Today's recommended reading is actually two entries, two parts of one rant. It's an excellent rant useful for anyone writing their novel in a city, especially those who are creating the city for their story:

City Rant (Part The First)
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10 Things To Look Forward To On Fictional Worlds

August 14th 2009 00:11
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


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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


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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


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Some Highlights

December 25th 2008 05:26
Today I'm going to highlight some of my favourite things to read. The first few are going to be actual books that I've loved and read more than once; the last few are going to be blog entries geared specifically towards writers. Reading for the cold winter months: curl up with a good book under your favourite blanket-don't we all just love it?

For those of you who have gotten Christmas money, some books to consider


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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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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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