We've all heard the claims. Fanfiction = bad writing. Blah blah blah. Gatekeepers want to keep readers of fanfiction from enjoying fanfiction and writers of fanfiction from enjoying writing it. For some reason. For one, fanfiction = bad writing is a false equivalent. Just like original fiction = good writing is a false equivalent. I've … Continue reading Why Writing Fanfiction Appeals to Me
No path ahead, no path behind. Just four flights of concrete stairs embedded into a hillside invisible beneath a blank blanket of snow. These, for some reason, just damp, not buried along with everything else. Upward, the pale hill sloped into the pale sky. Downward, more snowy hills rolled away into infinity. It felt like … Continue reading The Hopeful Wanderer – Open Me
Deep down, or maybe not so deep down, writers know the value of a good opening sentence. Because writers are readers and have read a multitude of first sentences that draw them straight into the story. Even if you don't know how, you know why: the hook. That magical gimmick that entices readers to keep reading, to buy the book, to read to the end, to tell their friends.
So I'm sure you know why you need The Hook. But how to create it? Structure it? Incorporate it into your story?
When I left a labyrinth full of unsettling creatures, I went out through the wrong exit. Ahead, a simple wooden gate, twice my height with a neat pitched roof, blocked my way forward, more wooden fencing stretching to either side. Almost as if to keep those strange cave creatures from getting out this way. Although … Continue reading The Hopeful Wanderer – Longing to Leave
A deep groan sounded through heavy fog as I inched my way up to a lane of thin ice running through a frozen lake. Though I was on the lookout for travelers along this lane, I also watched against any misstep that would send me plummeting below to a shivering grave. Several such lanes of … Continue reading The Hopeful Wanderer – Forth
At the bottom of a lake long dried up, my hazy gaze rested hopefully on a cloud building in the distance. Dust rose up around my plodding feet, settling on my cracked tongue. The size of this lakebed desert must have grown since the last estimation. I didn't have enough water to get back; I … Continue reading The Hopeful Wanderer – Buried Tracks
I have never had much use for writing magazines. When I first began writing, I went to them for instruction, guidance, the revealing of writerly secrets. I didn't find as much of that as I wanted. Plus, the issues kept piling up in my home, not quite read all the way through, because what is … Continue reading Writing Notebooks Reveal
Without a breath of air to stir them, a plume of snowflakes rose up from the drifts coating the mountainside. Where the morning sunlight had not yet touched, deep blue shadows crept beneath a forest of firs. Nothing moved but the flurry of flakes, whirling around each other, the whole cluster angling upward along the … Continue reading The Hopeful Wanderer – Preservation Efforts
The way I see it, no new year has hurt us the way 2020 has hurt us. In past years, I have found myself quietly swept up in the hope of a fresh start on New Year's Day. New writing goals to pursue, maximum output calculated down to the letter if I can just write … Continue reading 2021: An Abundance of Caution
Someone set a field on fire with me in it. Gray smoke rolled skyward and drifted along the tilled dirt, tangling around my feet and stinging my eyes. I had picked this field to cross because nothing grew in it, so I couldn't imagine what the fire consumed. Pulling my shirt up over my nose … Continue reading The Hopeful Wanderer – Burning Roads
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