be the story

Night Echoes by Holly Lisle Book Review

I just read Holly Lisle’s novel Night Echoes. I put up a quick video review of the book, which is below. (Read more…)

PersonalityPage, Character Traits for Writers

I frequently use PersonalityPage.com to assemble personality traits for characterization. The site is not organized for writers. In fact, the site navigation is poorly designed and pretty difficult to figure out. I had to poke around the site a bit to find the best pages there for characterization and how to use them. But having done so, I discovered that the content on those pages is perfect for writers trying to create characters. (Read more…)

Online Fiction Tuesday #1

Most fiction is not worth reading, because 90% of everything is crap. This rule clearly applies to online fiction. Yet, I love to read a good story, and plenty of them are indeed published online. But it’s often hard to find them amongst the rest. Therefore, now wearing my editor’s cap, I present to you some online stories that I would categorize not-crap. (Read more…)

Carnival of Storytelling #9

Welcome to the Carnival of Storytelling!

Thanks to everyone who submitted articles. Please show your support by checking out other articles on these blogs.

If you would like to host an edition of the Carnival of Storytelling, please let me know.

Now, the most interesting posts in the blogosphere about telling stories…

(Read more…)

Why I Don’t do 70 Days of Sweat (and other sprints)

70 Days of Sweat, Round 3 begins tomorrow. I will not be participating. Just as I participate in neither NaNoWriMo nor NaNoEdMo. Why not? What do I have against writers trying to write a book? Nothing, except…

In my view, either I’m a writer, and I write consistently. Or I’m not a writer, and I don’t. Therefore, churning out a novel before the end of the day May 10, that exercise does not make me a writer. Just a few hundred words each and every day, that does make me a writer. This misperception many writers and aspiring writers seem to have. It’s as if they think they need to push themselves to the limit in order to get enough time for writing, and that requires something like NaNoWriMo or 70 Days of Sweat.

Or else there’s some lure in the idea that, if you just buckle down and do it, you could actually write a novel in only a month (or 2½ months). I think that’s the wrong attitude to take. Rather, look at it this way: If you can spend just 10 or 20 minutes each day writing, you can finish a complete novel in under a year. That’s right, if you really want to be a writer, you don’t have to give up your life. You don’t have to “find time,” because you can probably find 10 or 20 minutes easily enough. (More on that in a sec.) (Read more…)

Sharing the Love with Holly Lisle Fans: Limited-time Free Offer

• Because Holly Lisle’s writing e-books have bailed me out more than once…
• Because Holly knows the value of paying forward…
• Because I want to follow in her footsteps…
• And because February is the month of Valentine’s Day…

If you’ve ever bought any of the electronic downloads from Holly Lisle’s online web shop, this limited-time freebie is available to you.

Click here to find out more.

-TimK

Carnival of Storytelling #8

Welcome to the Carnival of Storytelling!

Thanks to everyone who submitted articles. Please show your support by checking out other articles on these blogs.

If you would like to host an edition of the Carnival of Storytelling, please let me know.

Now, the most interesting posts in the blogosphere about telling stories…

(Read more…)

Discovering Character Secrets from Your Relatives!

Much of the time, we treat relatives as obligations: “Yeah, but what can you do? He’s family.”

This year, during the holiday break between December 25 and January 1, the kids and I and Grandma and Grampa piled into a rented minivan and trekked 7 hours to southern New Jersey… where the aunts and uncles and first and second cousins reside. And while I was there, I finally understood why Brothers and Sisters makes me laugh.

But the biggest epiphany I had… (Read more…)

The Most Important Story Element

In the beginning, I was a software developer, not a writer. And if you’ve read any open-source documentation, you know how badly software developers write. So you know how wide a chasm I had to jump if I wanted to learn how to write fiction.

The fiction bug first bit me in 2002, when I had an inspiration for an idea I wanted to write about, and I knew I had to explore the idea from within a story, because it was the only way to make the words personal, concrete, not just to explore an abstract idea. So I sat down to pen the great American novel… (Read more…)

Happy Thanksgiving Wishes

I want to wish everyone in the U.S. a happy Thanksgiving. I myself will be spending the day with family. And I hope that wherever you are, you’ll find love and happiness there.

You’ve probably noticed I’m posting much more on this blog of late. That’s because I’m actually writing again… seriously writing. That is, I’m pursuing it professionally. That’s why BeTheStory.com has a new graphical theme, because I’ve made this site part of a larger group of sites. I talked about this at my personal blog, “Changes: Fading Out of the Software Business”.

I’ve linked 4 sites together as part of this strategy:

• www.JTimothyKing.com - The central hub. It contains links to all my sites, contact information, a selection of stories and articles I’ve written, and links to featured online offers.

• blog.JTimothyKing.com - My personal blog, previously at www.JTSE.com/blog. Here, I used to talk about business, professionalism, and software development. I’ still talk about these things, but I also talk about writing, personal experiences, stories I’ve written, and religion and politics. This blog uses the same software as BeTheStory.com, and you can subscribe to new posts via RSS or email.

• BeTheStory.com - This site, my writing site. All about how to write a story, and how to become a better writer. And since becoming a better writer involves analyzing others’ stories, I’ll continue to post reviews and analysis of books, film, and TV. And video games, if I get around to it. Expect my future reviews to be less general and more about the properties of the storytelling.

• shop.JTimothyKing.com - My online store, not yet active. Right now, it redirects to 1001 Character Quirks, which is being distributed through ClickBank. But I have plans to make it a full online store, directly distributing both electronic and physical products. That is, as soon as I work the kinks out of the e-commerce software.

Most of my time of late has been spent paying the bills (i.e., doing work for paying clients) and writing The Conscience of Abe’s Turn and other fiction. But this shift in focus, or rather a clarification in focus, also means I’m writing more for Be the Story and for my blog. So expect much more content.

-TimK