P: Potential Energy: Deciding Your Next Project

P: Potential Energy: Deciding Your Next Project

Posted on by R.M. Archer

Many of us authors have way more ideas than we know what to do with, and not only that, but they tend to come at the most inopportune times. With so many ideas, how do we know which to follow and which to leave? Which idea is worth pursuing as your next project?

​Know How Many Projects You Can Write At Once

This will obviously affect how many ideas you can follow at once. I used to work on something like half a dozen projects at a time, until Continue reading “P: Potential Energy: Deciding Your Next Project” →

O: Over-Ambitious Goals

O: Over-Ambitious Goals

Posted on by R.M. Archer

Goal-setting can be both exciting and stressful. Often we make goals at the beginning of the year, promptly forgetting about them or going off the rails. We also make smaller-scale goals for smaller aspects of our life, and generally these are easier for us to reach, but we’re still not perfect. I’m largely talking in this post about the former type, but this also applies to the latter type for those of us who tend to go for overachieving at times or wrongly estimate how much time we’ll have to do things. First, how do we end up making over-ambitious goals? Well, we overestimate our abilities; we tell ourselves we have to get these things done; we decide this is the year we’ll actually do what we said we’d do five years ago… There are a lot of factors that go into making over-ambitious goals. Sometimes we don’t know we’re going to have trouble with a goal until we try, and we think it’s better to shoot too high than too low (which is probably true). But then what do you do when you realize your goal was over-ambitious? Continue reading “O: Over-Ambitious Goals” →

5 Ways to Close Your Book

5 Ways to Close Your Book

Posted on by R.M. Archer

We all know the feeling of loss when we finish a good book (or the sigh of relief when we finish a bad one), but what are some ways that we as authors can end our own books? Here are five possible ways to close your book.

​1. The Happy Ending

The guy gets the girl, the villain is vanquished, all is right with the world, the sky is filled with sunshine and rainbows, “and they all lived happily ever after.” Continue reading “5 Ways to Close Your Book” →

N: Names in Writing

N: Names in Writing

Posted on by R.M. Archer

Names have many uses in fiction, both inside and outside of the book. (Pen names, anyone?) As such, this is going to be split into three sections.

​Character Names

This is probably the first thing you think of when you think of names in stories. After all, the characters are the most important part, right? Well I don’t think that’s entirely accurate, but character names can play a big role in your story. Continue reading “N: Names in Writing” →

M: Mournseeker Compound Scene

M: Mournseeker Compound Scene

Posted on by R.M. Archer

Mournseeker is a story that I started based on a random idea I had for a line of dialogue. I don’t remember when I had the idea for the dialogue, but I started the story last July and didn’t write past about 3.5k due to unsurety about the worldbuilding (which is super cool but doesn’t line up with any of my other universes and thus I’d have to design from scratch). It’s sort of a western dystopian story, the MC is a gunslinger, what I know of the world is super cool, reading over it again I really enjoyed the writing voice I used, and it’s just generally a cool idea (and the first of a planned trilogy).

Anyway, compounds are a cool thing in this world, so I intended to have a scene in which Gen and Reyce (the two MCs) enter Warden Compound, but then there was a mishap and… Well, just read and find out.

(Note: You can read Mournseeker’s opening scene here if you’d like, either before or after this one.)

Continue reading “M: Mournseeker Compound Scene” →