be the story

Carnival of Storytelling #6

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…

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The Real 7 Steps to Becoming a Better Writer

Getting caught up on my RSS feeds, I saw Brian Clark’s 10 Steps to Becoming a Better Writer. He didn’t make up this advice. It has been repeated far and wide. But it’s absolutely wrong.

The advice is basically, if you want become a better writer, you should write, write some more, keep writing and writing and writing until you become a better writer. Some authors even take great pride at how much they’ve written that’s never been published. They take pride in the number of rejections they’ve gotten, because it makes them feel like they’re pursuing their dream, even if they’re not getting anywhere.

None of that makes you better writer. That makes you a so-so writer at best. If you want to be a better writer, especially if you want to be a truly great writer, here are 7 steps you can follow that will actually make you a better writer, and not just a prolific one. (Read more…)

When to Use Character Quirks

I’ve read plenty of writing advice to improve your fictional characters using quirks, or hooks, or tags. That is, make the character more interesting by having her play with her hair, jiggle her keys, overuse a catch-phrase, or the like. These quirks are usually just lumped together with other character traits, but I think there’s an advantage to thinking about them separately. Because you can’t just take a bunch of quirks, throw them together, and have a compelling character. Quirks only work in the context of a character.

Holly Lisle hit the nail on the head on her website in her advice about how to write a fictional character: (Read more…)