Posts by Steven Drennon
This is one of those questions where everyone is going to have a different opinion, so ultimately the final answer is up to you. We can help you consider options, but you have to make the final cho...
I don't believe there is any way that anyone outside of Amazon could truly answer this. The best anyone could hope for would be to guess or speculate, and that's not what this site is about. As fo...
"Don't judge a book by it's cover." We've all heard that, but how many of us actually adhere to it? I believe that is a totally antiquated statement, especially these days when more and more books ...
One of the first things you should consider is whether or not you are going to have to pay anything to this local printer in order to get your book "published". If so, then you may want to consider...
One thing to consider is just how important the setting is to the story. If there are key aspects of the setting that factor into the story, then that could enhance the actual story. For example, "...
Think of your story as separate scenes. Your idea about writing a novel of interconnected short stories is basically the same thing. Each chapter is a different scene, or a different short story, i...
To expand on the comment by John Smithers, one of the advantages of an epic fantasy is the grand scale upon which your story is built. Usually an epic fantasy either contains a lot of characters or...
As mentioned previously, if two or more contributors are considered as co-authors, they share in all revenue generated from the work. The exception would be if they had signed some form of agreemen...
Publishers can do all of the things you identified in your list for you, but the degree of commitment that they apply to each will vary based on a number of factors. If they believe that you have a...
One of the things that first came to mind on this is to address it the same as any research you would do for any other novel. If you write a book about a French character, you may have to look up c...
This is one of those questions where everybody just has to go with their own personal preferences. My last choice would be trying to dictate. I tried Dragon Diction as well, but as you have already...
If you create a user account at Critique Circle, you can gain access to a number of online tools they have available specifically for writers. Below are some examples and the description they provi...
There are a lot of different ways that people can invoke fear or intimidation tactics, but ultimately you will have to decide what works best for your story. A lot of times a group or individual wi...
I have the same problem. What I did to handle it was to start writing down an outline or synopsis of the new story ideas as they came to me. This allowed me to get them out of my head and store the...
Lauren has some very good advice there, but the one thing I would add would be a timeline. If the stories you already have are tied together in any way, then try to lay them out on a timeline to sh...
I have a setting in one of my stories where a character has to describe a very long series of events, giving the history of an object so that others know more about it. This not only provides the r...
Someone on another forum asked for advice on a sentence she was writing, so I thought I'd share it here and see what kind of responses we could get. The sentence in question is marked by italics. (...
Normally this kind of statement would appear by itself at the beginning of your material. With a print magazine, there are a couple of options. One option would be to place it as small print in a f...
The fastest way to take advantage of the current publicity that is focused on Steve Jobs would be to self-publish your book. You can go to Amazon Kindle to get it out as an e-book and have it avail...
Does anyone have or know of a list of magazines (print or online) accepting submissions for short stories? It would be nice if it could be broken out by genre and payment rates (if applicable).
Are there specific characteristics that one should strive for when trying to develop a strong female character? Is it truly dependent on the genre of the book, or are there certain elements that ca...
I believe it depends on whether you are trying to be personable or professional. If you want to have the reader feel that they are reading comments directly from you, in a personal manner, then the...
For my epic fantasy novel I used index cards to identify some of the key characteristics of most of the characters. This helped me whenever I had to reference a character that I hadn't used in a co...
In my experience with self-publishing e-books, I have found that a lot of authors will use flash fiction or short stories as freebies to encourage people to buy their longer works. I also know seve...
My first fantasy novel was told from the perspective of the good guys AND the bad guys. Each had their own respective goals and when the story was centered around one or the other, the reader was s...
