Thank You For Dropping By

This blog will feature novels I've written for adults and YA's, plus some illustrations and designs. Some of the novels will only have sample chapters posted and their cover designs. I'm also hoping to post scrap kits for free download as soon as I can.

Well, that's all from me just now.

Thanks, again, for coming :)

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Thursday, October 15, 2009

Some Writing Fun

I discovered this via Nathan Branford's blog. Nathan is a well-known agent for Curtis Brown and his blog is worth visiting for the wealth of writing related information, sheer entertainment and charm.

You can create a word cloud of your latest work-in-progress by pasting a copy of your ms into http://www.wordle.net

This was the result of having a word cloud done on Winter Roses Never Die. The bigger the word, the more often it has been used. You can click on the picture for a larger image.


Wordle:winter roses

Breaking The Rules

Some Thoughts and a Little Bit of a Writing Rant :)
One way to write well, I think, is to ignore (some) writing advice. Of course the writer must be confident enough to do that. I recall when doing a writing course twenty years ago that a respected Australian author instructed his class to start a story with action or dialogue. I ignored this as I thought dialogue a cheesy way to begin. Lately I've been noticing many writers advising against opening with dialogue, so it has become a 'no-no' rule.

The trouble with writing to rules or formualas - except in the case of grammar or punctuation - is then everyone writes in a similar, predictable fashion. Consider the dating of styles from one generation to a next. Often you can pick the era where something was written from the writing rules that story is following. As these rules are always changing, it shows that nothing is set in stone.

One rule I dislike is having conflict as the main thrust and highpoint of a novel. Conflict does catch one's attention, and it is dramatic. However, as we all hate conflict in real life, why not think of replacing conflict in our entertainment with something more appealing and productive? Instead of characters with problems, why not characters with answers? Instead of fighting and despair why not show how people can live with peace and hope - and how much fun that would be? What we focus on we tend to manifest, so if the media could influence the masses with positive messages then our awareness and behaviour might be lifted to new levels.