Countdown to 2024 - Nine Writing Tips Before Christmas - #8 - Write What the Reader Wants

Countdown + Writing + Wallpaper

Tip number 8 is so obvious that it hurts. And it hurts doubly so, because it effectively means that you have to sell your soul.

Write what the reader wants.

... but that's unfair! Should you shelve your dreams and go low and commercial?

The (Dis)honest Romance Writer

Writing + Reference

The following is a completely dishonest, biased, male-viewpoint, misogynistic, unfair and unhinged :-) approach to writing romance. So, take it for what it is: a very cynical outlook on (broken) hearts.

And before I start: there is nothing wrong with reading or writing romance! If you like it, go for it! It's not better or worse than other genre, in any way.

Wattpad no more

Column + Writing

How useful is online publishing? More specifically, will online platforms help you to become a (published) writer, help you to improve your writing, or simply help you find readers?

I have my doubts...

Four weeks of Wattpad, one day of Scribophile

Writing

On March 4, 2017, I joined Wattpad.

I'm a month older now, and my life still sucks 😊 On the other hand, I actually wrote 40 to 50 thousand words. (After several rewrites I'm probably 30% into my first novel, yeah!)

Put your favorites in a box, Mister Geek

Column

No matter how you categorize series, movies, books, you will always find examples that do not fit in. That refuse to respect certain borders. That are... different.

Anne Ursu - The Troubled Girls of Dragomir Academy (2021)

Audiobook Review.

Each book that starts with a 'school' or 'academy' threatens to become yet another Harry Potter clone. That indeed was my first worry when I started reading this one.

The second fear I had was the contra-'misogynistic' bend of the story. Don't get me wrong, misogyny has no place in this world, and unfortunately there are still many examples of such behavior in today's society.

Writing to a prompt part 2 - The 'why' game

Writing.

You can turn any 'prompt' into a short story, and it's worth doing so. At least to try to, now and again.

All it needs is proper application of the 'why' game. And then that same ruleset can be used to check what has been written.

Best of all, it  works for everything, longs as well as short stories. Read on...

Linden A. Lewis - The First Sister / The Second Rebel / The Last Hero

Audiobook Review

Linden A. Lewis proves that you should be careful how you title your book. Searching for 'The First Sister' on Goodreads gives more than ten pages of results 😅

After that little aside we get back to the core question: how's the book?

Janice Hardy – Understanding Show, Don’t Tell

Writing + Book Review

Janice Hardy is a Fantasy author, and runs the Fiction University website / blog. Her blog is a source of interesting titbits, related to writing fiction. She turned a number of those blog posts into books, of which I purchased three.

The three books by her hand that I'll discuss are focused on beginners to mid-level writers. They might make some good presents for under the tree, in case you have a young niece / nephew who wants to be an author some day…