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Intro Power levels are something that not every genre has to deal with but, if you’re writing sci-fi, fantasy, or superhero, it may be one of the trickiest things you’re going to have to tackle. For those of you who don’t know what I mean by “power levels”, I’ll explain. In many sci-fi, fantasy, and…
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Intro If you write fantasy or sci-fi, you’re likely going to find yourself dealing with characters who speak languages that don’t exist in the real world. Maybe there are going to be aliens or orcs or even just regular old humans who, for one reason or another, don’t speak a regular Earth language. Which means…
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Intro I’ve always had a soft spot for mentor characters—I don’t know why. Maybe I like that experience-born confidence that they so often have, or seeing the relationships between them and their protégés. Maybe I just like them because they’re already cool and accomplished by the time the story starts, so they can work that…
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Intro Nothing is more important to the process of character creation than coming up with the personality. A character’s personality defines who they are, and is the biggest thing that’s going to help readers connect with them. And, if you can get readers to connect with your character, then they’re that much more likely to…
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Intro There are lots of different brainstorming methods out there, and different ones work better for different people. Like all parts of the writing process, there is no right or wrong way to do it—that’s especially true with something that’s as behind-the-scenes as brainstorming. The way I do it is pretty simple: I dump all…
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Intro I talked last month about how I use inspiration from other creatives’ work, but inspiration isn’t the only way that other people’s stories have helped me as a writer. Reading—and experiencing stories through any other sort of media, for that matter—is also possibly the best way to learn how stories work. From basic plot…
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Intro All creatives—whether they’re a writer, an artist, or a musician—take inspiration from somewhere. And, a lot of the time—or, for me, most of the time—that inspiration comes from the work of other artists. Sometimes it’s a cool character that gets my gears turning, or an interesting plotline—it can be just about anything. A lot…
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Intro Whether they’re best friends, romantic partners, or mentor and mentee, I’ve always loved writing partners. Part of it probably comes from the fact that partners are a pretty common theme in the stuff that I like, but another part of it is just that they’re really fun to write. Two characters who are always…
