Note: this post was originally part of a writing series, and some comments may refers to that. Some people hate plotting. They often call themselves “pantsers,” because they write by the seat of their pants. Many people who hate to plot ahead say that they want to be able to discover things along the way. Well, guess what – when

Sometimes it’s hard to know how to start a story, and that’s why I pulled together these opening scene examples. I’m going to talk a little more about first scenes than first lines, though I’ll mention some first lines, too. These are only some of the many good ways to start a novel. I know it can be hard to figure

Hey y’all! I did a series of posts about personality traits for different zodiac signs, with the idea that they could inspire fictional characters in your writing. For everyone’s convenience, this post links to all of the ones in the series. (I formatted some of these differently than others, but I’m not changing it. I’m not a Virgo.) Click on the name

Hi friends! Welcome to my final post about using zodiac signs to create fictional characters. Whether you believe in astrology or not, it’s a fun way for writers to think about character development. I promised I would finish up this series before the end of the year. In before the lock! Let’s take a look at Pisces, the sign of

Last week I shared a list of agents accepting submissions of fantasy novels, but here are a bunch of publishers who accept unagented submissions. This list is mostly the same as my list of science fiction publishers, but there are some differences, and I figured it’s more convenient to have a list just for your genre. Clicking on the name of the

Hi friends! Welcome to the penultimate post in my series about using signs of the zodiac as inspiration for character development. This is going to be the easiest one of all, because I am such an Aquarius. Let’s take a look at the typical Aquarius personality type! Here are some good qualities of an Aquarius: humanitarian unconventional innovative idealistic curious