5 Myths About Writing Science Fiction

So you want to write a science fiction novel.  However, you feel like you don’t know what you’re doing.  Perhaps you read science fiction like this humble author and you’d like to try your hand at writing something in the science fiction genre. Well, there are a few myths about science fiction novelists, and I’m

The Lost Soul and Characterization

I spent a wonderful afternoon yesterday hashing out the details of the latest Five Rims installment with my good friend and collaborator Jack Johnson.  If you don’t have a writing group from which you can bounce ideas around, you need to at least get a good friend who is also a writer or at least an

3 Reasons Why I Wound My Characters

I’m currently working on the third book in a space opera trilogy. One thing I learned early on is that characters must be believable and that readers must have a stake in them if you are going to get very far. …Especially if you plan to write a multi-part book series with them…. One trick

5 Tips for Creating Dialogue That Flows

I haven’t been on the blog for a while.  I received an e-mail from a reader who is having trouble with dialogue, and so I decided to crank out a little tip list for them. With NaNoWriMo coming soon, keeping these five tips in mind when writing dialogue should help any writer craft meaningful and

3 Ways to Make Minor Characters More Colorful

Frank Herbert’s Dune: Writing Lesson 3

I finished reading Dune by Frank Herbert, and as a first time reader of the series (Yeah.  I know.  Where’ve you been?) I was amazed by the deep philosophical nature of the book.  More than that, though, as I have been posting on this blog, old Frank Herbert has many tips to teach us about the

New Podcast Up: Dying Hard for Your Hero

One evening last week I was home alone (sort of) and was mourning the loss of Alan Rickman, so I watched “Die Hard”. Even though I had seen the film many times, I learned a valuable lesson about writing about action heroes from the film that I want to share with everyone. This episode is

3 Things “Die Hard” Taught Me About Writing Action Heroes

The other night I popped in my well-worn copy of the 1988 film “Die Hard” with Bruce Willis and the ever lovable villain Hans Gruber played by the late Alan Rickman.  It was a quiet night, my wife was out with the girls, my son was out with friends, and my youngest daughter was in

What Andy Weir (Author of “The Martian”) Can Teach Us About Writing

This summer I burned through several books in the down time between publishing The Terminarch Plot all the other things I had to do around the house.  One of the best books I read this summer, soon to be a major motion picture starring Matt Damon, was The Martian by Andy Weir. The book is amazing, a very

New Podcast Up: Not So Fantastic Four

Well, we saw it…and it wasn’t HORRIBLE…we guess. Ryan and I discuss the new Fantasic Four film and what writers can learn from it. There are many lessons in this podcast from characterization to plot development to sustaining a threatening villain. Fantastic Four had none of these and we break it down for you from