Writer's School
Writing is one of the oldest artforms, but writing fiction is one of the newest. Like any other artform it looks deceptively easy to get into, but once you start the hidden troubles show up. The best authors will tell you that you can't just learn how to write, but this is only partially true. There is a facet to writing that is a learned skill and a facet that you have to be born with.
To the layperson writing is simply stringing words together into a coherent whole. And, to an extent, that is the truth—it's also the part of the art that can be taught. Anyone can learn how to string words together into a coherent sentence and string hundreds of those sentences into a coherent story, but unless you are born with the gift of knowing how to tell a story the end product is, more often than not, bland and built of tiresome cliches and rehashed plots. But if you have been born a storyteller the end product shines, what cliches and rehashed plots it may contain used and retold in such a manner that they seem new again.
This “Writers School” is an attempt to break that mold. Not only is it going to try and teach those people who are born storytellers ways to improve their skills, but it is going to try and teach people how to tell the stories. In here you can find articles on creating believable characters and worlds, tips about how to escape many common pitfalls that snare many writers.
Contents
Before Writing
| Title | Description | Author |
| Making Miracles | Finding the extraordinary in the ordinary. | Rabbit |
| The Message at the Center of the Novel | Preachiness versus Having A Theme | Rabbit |
| Pigging Out | Some thoughts on one of the more enduring shared settings, "The Blind Pig" | Rabbit |
| The Pornography Trap | One of the most common TF story pitfalls | Rabbit |
| Putting First Things First | "It's the story, stupid!" | Rabbit |
| Title Stolen by Evil, Inc. | Creating and writing villains | Rabbit |
| The Tail Tale | Avoiding cliches and common pitfalls of TF fiction | Rabbit |
| Writing Fantasy | Tips about writing good fantasy | Rabbit |
| Learning from the Masters | Some recommended Science Fiction TF novels to read and take notes from | Michael Bard |
| Points of View | What POV should you write your story in? | Michael Bard |
| Research:It's not just for School anymore | Getting your facts straight! | Michael Bard |
| Transformation Writing Types | Categorizing TF Fiction | Michael Bard |
| Character | Some basics about where characters come from, how and when to describe them, and what kind of characters you really need | Fish |
| Dialog | Punctuating dialog properly and making it sound real, but not too real | Fish |
| Syntax | Everything you needed to know about grammar and punctuation and then some | Fish |
| Word Choice | Choosing the right words for your story | Fish |
Writing the Story
| Title | Description | Author |
| How's This For Openers | Good advice on creating a memorable first paragraph | Rabbit |
| Lights, Camera, Action! | Tips about writing good action sequences | Rabbit |
| Thinking Things Through | If you want to toss in a neat technology or ability into a story, think about what else could be done with it before actually inserting it | Michael Bard |
| Use Your Senses Dammit! | Don't just describe things visually in your writing | Michael Bard |
After Writing
| Title | Description | Author |
| The E-Publishing Dilemma | What, exactly, is an author to do? | Rabbit |
| Getting Published | Tips and Tricks for those people wishing to get published | Rabbit |
| The Letter | How can a would-be writer know he's passed the Point of No Return? | Rabbit |
General Advice
| Title | Description | Author |
| Beating Block | Different Methods of Beating Writers Block | Rabbit |
| Getting Small | Age Regression and the world through a childs eyes | Rabbit |
| Going Soft | Through the eyes of a member of the opposite sex | Rabbit |
| The Horror, the Horror | Writing Horror Stories | Rabbit |
| The Proper Tool | What you need if you want to be a writer. | Rabbit |
| Experience | Personal adventures and experience breeds better stories | Rabbit |
| Why We Write | A look inside the auctorial mind. | Rabbit |
| Writers Groups And Other Support Mechanisms | What's good and bad about them. | Rabbit |
| The Writing Life | Why do they do it? | Rabbit |
| From Thesis to Synthesis | Some notes on a fundamental necessity for improving one's craft. | ShadowWolf |
| As you and I both know | What is "infodump" in fiction and how to avoid it | Michael Bard |
| Creating Worlds to Share | An examination of why some shared universes are successful, and why others aren't | Michael Bard |
| Critiquing | Advice and thoughts as to how to usefully critique things, and how to use critique | Michael Bard |
| Editors aren't the Enemy | Why editing and critiquing by others is useful and vital | Michael Bard |
| Keeping the Editor Happy | Three common errors I see in fiction submitted to TSAT: Repetitive Sentence Structure, Narrator Changes, Unnatural Sounding Speech | Michael Bard |
| Posting to Lists | Using mailing lists to get stories read and critiqued | Michael Bard |
| Technological Transformation Methodology | Some technological methods of inducing transformations | Michael Bard |
| Write what you Know | Applying that rule to TF Fiction | Michael Bard |
| Writing in Groups | Success and failure about writing groups formed to write co-authored novels | Michael Bard |
| Collaborative Writing with EtherPad | Using the EtherPad collaborative text editor to allow multiple people to write stories together | Robotech_Master |
| Writing in the TBP universe | Important things you should be aware of before writing a story set in :"Tales From The Blind Pig" | Michael Bard |
| Writing Organization | Different methods of writing work for different folks. Outlines, sequential/non-sequential writing, etc. | Michael Bard |
| The Importance of Narrative Flow | About "Narrative Flow" and how important it is to maintain it | ShadowWolf |
| The Vanishing Transforation | A defense of the inclusion of detailed transformation sequences and what separates one from "transporn" | Sturmovik |
Article Series
The Five C's by Rabbit
Writing Science Fiction by Michael Bard
