D.N. Bryn
Speculative Fiction and Beyond
Tag: writing advice
How to write a novel: a beginner’s guide to the basics of storytelling.
First off, you have to know these two things: Your first draft of your first book will be terrible. All your favorite authors of all time wrote a terrible first draft of their first book too. Probably a terrible second and third draft, maybe…
Writing Diversity: Can You Force it?
Writing diversity isn’t “forced.” What’s forced in writing is continuously cherry pick the situations in which many groups have been deliberately forced outby the one group who prides themselves as being ‘the norm.’ Let me explain: While the world is very diverse, there are situations and areas where someone…
Why Can’t I Stick to My Outline?
The inability to write what you’ve outlined plagues many of us, and it has many potential causes, some of which have workarounds, while others don’t. Here’s just a couple: 1. You don’t know your characters well enough when you outline, so when you write them,…
Writing: Hobby vs Career. (Spoilers: both are hard!)
If you want to write as a career you’ll have to write on days you don’t want to. You’ll have to write when you aren’t motivated, when you aren’t in the mood, when writing isn’t any fun. Just because writing is something people can have fun doing, doesn’t…
Character Creation
I’ve been running my characters through these questions so I thought I might as well share them. They are meant to be a fun but challenging look at how your characters are going to interact with each other and the plot. The examples and…
Speculative Elephants: More About Description.
(A continuation of the feverish analysis in this post.) Let’s now consider a reader who has no idea what an elephant is. We the writer want to present our reader with words aligned in just the right way that we paint a picture of an elephant…
Descriptions as Elephants: the Happy Medium.
There are a lot of odd rules floating around about descriptions (some of which are useful and others… not so much), but to form writing theories that any writer can apply to their own work without losing their personal style, we often need to…
Not all books are made equal.
(Not all books are made equal.) The making of not all books is equal. Some stories take ages to write, and longer to edit. Some you can knock out in what feels like an instant. Some are long. Some are short. Some are complex….
How to Staying Motivated While You Write: On the days you want to give up.
This is a very simple question in that I have answered before, and yet a very hard one because the way I stay motivated isn’t going to work for everyone. How do I, Bryn, stay motivated? Flexible outlines. I have a lovely outline that tells me I have so…
What not to (not) write in fantasy.
I’ve seen some posts going around on what not to write in fantasy, many of which amount to: Don’t write evil kings. Don’t write people who are evil for the sake of evil. Don’t write bullies. Don’t write villains at all actually. Don’t write mentors. Don’t…
Our Bloody Pearl:
After a year of voiceless captivity, a bloodthirsty siren fights to return home while avoiding the lure of a suspiciously friendly and eccentric pirate captain.
