Scribbled Fiction

The Young Adult Fiction writers of today are pioneers in a new and rapidly-growing genre, which gives me good news and bad news to give you: The good news: The best YA books of today are going to become the classic Young Adult Fiction of the next generation. Go YA writers! The bad news: Knowing this, today's YA writers need to set a good standard. We learn about classics in school and we're taught how the writers did it, why? Because they were good . If we have subpar examples of YA writing, two things could happen. 1) There might not be any good YA to pass on in the first place and 2) The genre won't have a good start, so it might fizzle out. So, in order to make sure that doesn't happen, let's talk about some of the harmful tropes that are going on in the YA genre. The guy who talks like a Shakespearian narrator. I'm lookin' at you, Austin Ames. You wanna know why the girl always ends up with the 'sweet' one and not the 'broody...

Tag number 2 for the week! I was tagged in this by Rachel , and I was delighted to have a blog topic for this Thursday, so thanks for the tag! We all know how much we writers like to talk about the characters we've created, and I find this tag so. Freaking. Hilarious!! But be warned, I have written a buttload of stuff in the last nine years I've been writing, so I'm going to have a HUGE array of novels and characters I'm referencing here. Rules 1. Thank the person who tagged you (thanks, Rachel!). 2. Include  this link  in your post. 3.  Use your own lovely Original Characters (OC’s); don’t use a friend’s characters or characters from your favorite fandom. They can be from any project, so long as you created them. For more fun, try to use as many different characters as possible. 4. Tag five people to play along. And the Questions Most Likely to Be a Poet Cecile from Spell City. Cecile is kind of all over the place. She's a faun with a pixie cut a...

Um, before we get started, can I just!!!!!!!!!!!! Scream!!!!!!!!!!! So I got up this morning to draft a blog post, this blog post, and what, just what did my little eyes see but over FIVE HUNDRED AND SIXTY VIEWS on my  Underused Historical Settings in Fiction . WHAT. YAAAAAASSSSSSSS It seems my Pinterest pinning has done me good! (Clearly I'll actually have to get around to making my Pinterest account into a business Pinterest account for my blog like I said I would) Anyway, into it! Like I have said infinite times already, I'm working on editing Crash and Burn, my NaNoWriMo project from three years ago, and I'm in the final round of edits!!!! Thus, I decided I wanted to participate in the Shared WIP tag started by Julian of Saver of Memories . Thanks for the awesome idea, Julian, even though I'm doing it like six months after the idea was thought of! It seemed like a good way to share what my novel's about, and maybe to build a little hyp...

Photo by  Tirachard Kumtanom  from  Pexels Greetings, my writer friends. How is your writing going? Poorly, you say? Stuffing your hand in a bucket full of acid and nails would be less painful, you say? Well, I have good news for you! Today we're talking about the small wins we writers get, even when it's not a good day. There are small successes everywhere that we're not recognizing. And a positive mindset is an important part of actually getting to the end of the book! So let's talk about those small wins! You wrote today. Even if it was three words in a happy birthday card, you got your creative juices flowing. You exercised your brain. And if those three words were in your novel, that's even better! Those are three words that you didn't have before. Those are three words that you don't have to write later in order to finish the novel. You enjoyed writing that scene, even if you eventually had to cut it out for the good of the novel. You ex...

I've already done  10 Underused Concepts in Sci-Fi  and  12 Underused Creatures in Fantasy (click the titles to go to the posts), now it's time for historical fiction to get the spotlight. I don't write a lot of historical fiction myself, but I know there are a lot of historical fiction writers out there! These settings can also be used in a historical sci-fi novel, in a steampunk novel, or even for a fantasy setting. So this is applicable to almost everyone! So on that note: Idea list: activate! The Great Depression. I know that writers like to stray away from talking about people who are broke, on hard financial times, or homeless. It makes people uncomfortable. Well, you know what I say? Good . If you want to make a change, you're gonna make some people uncomfortable. You could write an excellent sci-fi novel based on the next depression that hits the future, or a fantasy world that is hitting hard times. Mesoamerica. Me! Me! I've done this! Whet...

Yes, the common writer adage is that all our stories are our children and we can't pick a favorite. Buuuuut what I've discovered over time is that, although all of my projects are very dear to my heart and yes, my children, some of them feel dearer to my heart than others. The same thing applies to the books we read. This one was good, this one's a classic, but that  one, that one's just so dear, so precious, the spine worn nearly to breaking, every page caressed a thousand times. What makes these stories so special? What makes us connect with these stories more than others? I'd say it's a personal connection. I'm not normally a reader who needs a personal connection with the character in order to like them, but thinking over books I've loved recently, I find that nearly all of them feel personal in one way or another. It's sort of different, and I'm finding I like it.  In The Agony House (it was scary, but not nearly as sca...

This is a new concept I'm trying on the blog. Since writing humor is one of my favorite things to do on the blog and  writing humor is one of my most popular topics, I thought it would be fun to do a monthly dump of the funny tweets I did on my Twitter (@ScribbldFiction, if anyone's interested), and see how it goes over. Additional note: I'm not super sure how the embedded tweets show up in the email, so if you're seeing it as typed-out, quote-like form, that might just be the email and you might have to view it in the browser. Let me know how they appear. Anyway, let the tweet mania begin! There is a vast difference between naming characters and applying for college. One is a difficult, painstaking process that leaves you completely exhausted and might determine your future, and the other is applying for college. #writerslife #writinglife #amwriting #writinghumor — Scribbled Fiction (@ScribbldFiction) March 1, 2019 The one that I already referenced o...

As a writer, one of the biggest problems I sometimes suffer from is having a short attent ion span. I stare off into space, I scroll through Pinterest, I play solitaire on my computer... It's really not helping my productivity. And if I can't get stuff done, I get frustrated and stomp around my house like a cave troll. Actual footage of me being ticked off at myself. So if this is the kind of thing that happens to you on a regular basis, this is the post for you! Let the tips for better productivity begin! 1. Have a plan prepared.  Knowing what you want to do beforehand is a surefire way to clamp down on unproductivity. Decide what you're going to do the night before or first thing in your day. I always work on my to-do list first thing while I'm watching a couple YouTube videos. Find what method serves you best to make sure you know what you're going to do and how you're going to do it. 2. Make the big stuff small . Break the day's writing g...