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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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2 Year Blogaversary

August 13th 2009 23:40
This is my official two year blogaversary for Fictional Worlds. Today, that is. So I'm writing a special post to talk about the last two years of my writing.

When I first came here, I had never had a poem published. I was completely unknown, unheard of, and no, I could not be found on Google. But I did have one good thing going for me: a talent and passion for writing.

When I was offered a domain name, there was only one thing that I could think of that would provide me with a lasting blog. This thing was writing, and thus Fictional Worlds was born. I didn't have any other specific topic, nothing that really struck me, at least not that I could write about constantly for a very long time.

Early on I made some great friends. Jeanne Dininni, author of Writers Notes, Kleonaptra, author of Kalika Psychosis, and Katyzzz, author of a variety of blogs found here, among others. Some have come, some have gone. Ruby Soho, Morgan Bell, various characters throughout the network of Orble have all contributed to my blogging experience in some way.

I've spent a lot of time and effort building this blog. The average post that I write takes ten to thirty minutes. But half an hour every day spent writing-that is without reading various posts on how to increase the quality of my blog and draw readers, and keep them-adds up over the course of a month, let alone the eight or nine months total that I've spent constantly blogging.

At first, I had a specific, rigid formula for the blog. I've realized that this doesn't work for me, yet again, not really a surprise; very little in my life is 'properly organized'. I need a certain amount of freedom, of flow in everything that I do. I can't follow rigid routines very well for more than a couple weeks, I think this is my biggest problem with school (other than stupid teenagers everywhere.)

Since I've come here I've had poems published in a few places. I've become findable on Google (Google Dianna L. Gunn and see what you get) and a lot more disciplined in my writing. Knowing that I have expectant readers here looking forward to gobbling up my content keeps me writing more each day.

I really and truly love blogging. I love the people that I've met through it and the things that I've found, sometimes in the sidebar on my own blog, links to the best writing posts on Orble. I love being a part of this site, even if other people think it doesn't have freedom of speech, I am free to talk about what I love, writing, and I even get a domain name from this site, which I couldn't afford on my own. Score. I get to read the posts on the network, comment, make friends, all that good stuff. Score.

Thank you for all of my loyal readers, the few that have been with me since the beginning and those of you who have only recently come to this blog. Thanks to everyone who takes time out of their day to read what I have to say. I'm glad you think I'm worth it.

So what do I want to do on this blog in the next year? Well, I want to do a monthly book review-or more than one in a month-here, starting this month. I will be releasing Bleed hopefully late next week, if I write enough poems at the cottage, but if not before Halloween; before Halloween to my readers, that is. It'll be cheaper for the first week, and only known about by those who read my blog. After the first week it'll go up slightly in price and I'll announce it in various other places.

I plan to release Myths of Tamraq, or two of the myths, on PDF and only inform blog readers of this; it will be free. The full ebook will be published early next year. I will be running a Dear Diary workshop type-thing in February, wait to hear more on that. In October I will run a two-week worldbuilding and character building workshop for Nanowrimo.

I have a lot in the works here at Fictional Worlds. If you've stuck with me this long, why not wait around to see what's next?
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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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Dianna G's Blogs

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