what i write, what inspires

Your reader wants to know where they are, but they don’t want pages and pages of intricate details about your setting. You need to choose what’s important and give your reader a few specific points. They can fill in the rest.

Here’s five tips for making your description say as much as it can in as few points as possible:

Think about what’s important to the story: Think about specific landmarks, individual items or the general layout of the land. If your character needs to be able to see a certain doorway from their armchair, make sure they can.

Think about what’s important to the characters: What in the setting reveals more about the characters that live there? Look at unusual things - it’s more interesting for a character to have no family photos in their house rather than having their walls filled with them.

Think about revealing backstory: What in your setting has been influenced by what happened before the beginning of your story? A statue in a town square or the name of a street can reveal important historical facts.

Think about revealing culture: Certain items can reveal interesting points about your world’s culture and traditions. The way the houses are built, or particular religious items in a room.

infinite-resolutions asked: Do you know of any books that will psychologically scar the reader?

I hesitate to even answer this question on the grounds that yes, I do know some incredibly scary, awful awful books that will scar you for life.

I am cushioning the truly awful ones among less horrific titles for the safety of others who may happen upon this list.

Battle Royale by Koushun Takami

We Need to Talk About Kevin by Lionel Shriver

Bastard Out of Carolina by Dorothy Allison

The Girl Next Door by Jack Ketchum

The Hot Zone: A Terrifying True Story by Richard Preston

Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov

The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson

Rosemary’s Baby by Ira Levin

Bridge to Terabithia by Katherine Paterson

The Silence of the Lambs by Thomas Harris

Perfume by Patrick Suskind

Justine by Marquis de Sade

The Painted Bird by Jerzy Kosiński

The Beach by Alex Garland

Logan’s Run by William F. Nolan and George Clayton Johnson

Geek Love by Katherine Dunn

Exquisite Corpse by Poppy Z. Brite

The Wasp Factory by Iain Banks

Glamorama by Brett Easton Ellis

Haunted by Chuck Palahniuk

And the Ass Saw the Angel by Nick Cave

Naked Lunch by William Burroughs

The Amityville Horror by Jay Anson

Johnny Got His Gun by Dalton Trumbo

Lord of the Flies by William Golding

House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski

American Psycho by Bret Easton Ellis

Room by Emma Donoghue

Coin Locker Babies by Ryū Murakami

The Road by Cormac McCarthy

A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess

Where the Red Fern Grows by Wilson Rawls

The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman

Bend Sinister by Vladimir Nabokov

Baise-Moi (Rape Me) by Virginie Despentes

Last Exit to Brooklyn by Hubert Selby Jr.

It by Stephen King

Lizard Music by Daniel Pinkwater

The His Dark Materials trilogy by Philip Pullman

Misery by Stephen King 

The Exorcist by William Peter Blatty

Heart-Shaped Box by Joe Hill

Malice by Griffin Hayes

Ghost Story by Peter Straub

Did I forget one? …Good.

vocaloid-review asked: I feel like a horrible person: I don’t want to read as much anymore ever since I read books aimed at my age group as sexist & condescending but I need to to improve as a writer. And when I read comic books, they’re not too great either. Do you have a list of books that’ll kick me back into gear, or at least some words of comfort for a girl who doesn’t want all her books about women & men to be ruled by romance, lazy plots, & what sells? (hell just give me a book without romance uuugh)

Here are some awesome books (most are YA) that have little to no romance in them:

The Ender’s Game series by Orson Scott Card (endorsed by blakesreckoning)

The Giver by Lois Lowry

I Am Legend by Richard Matheson

World War Z by Max Brooks

Lord of the Flies by William Golding

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain

The Outsiders by S.E. Hinton

Stitches by David Small 

The Book Thief by Markus Zusak

Monster by Walter Dean Myers 

Breadcrumbs by Anne Ursu and Erin Mcguire

The Ranger’s Apprentice series by John Flanagan 

A Single Shard by Linda Sue Park 

Bound by Donna Jo Napoli

The Orphan’s Tales by Catherynne M. Valente

House of Stairs by William Sleator 

The Dreamhouse Kings series by Robert Liparulo

Hold Me Closer, Necromancer by Lish McBride 

Holes by Louis Sachar

Hate List by Jennifer Brown 

I Am the Messenger by Markus Zusak

Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close by Jonathan Safran Foer 

The Young James Bond series by Charlie Higson

Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury

The Elegance of the Hedgehog by Muriel Barbery

The Inkheart trilogy by Cornelia Funke

A Dog’s Purpose by W. Bruce Cameron (suggested by forestrabbit)

Room by Emma Donoghue (suggested by ameftowriter)

The Old Kingdom trilogy by Garth Nix (suggested by rachelthehouseelf)

The Transall Saga by Gary Paulsen (suggested by calliotp)

The Chrestomanci series by Diana Wynne Jones (suggested by windsroad)

The Dalemark series by Diana Wynne Jones (suggested by windsroad)

Unwind by Neal Shusterman (suggested by davidtennantismylover)

The Secrets of The Immortal Nicholas Flamel series by Michael Scott (suggested by jejunemondegreen)

The Mysterious Benedict Society by Trenton Lee Stewart (suggested by illuminatedbycandlelight)

The Black Jewels trilogy by Anne Bishop (suggested by pfdiva)

The Bartimaeus trilogy by Jonathan Stroud (suggested by sehrglanzvoll)

The Twelve Kingdoms by Fuyumi Ono (suggested by sehrglanzvoll)

City of Ember by Jeanne DuPrau (suggested by sehrglanzvoll)

Homeward Bounders by Diana Wynne Jones (suggested by jillwandersen)

The Dark Is Rising series by Susan Cooper (suggested by jillwandersen)

The Wind Up Bird Chronicles by Haruki Murakami (suggested by dorkindenial)

The Maze Runner by James Dashner (suggested by we-could-go-home)

Invisible Monsters by Chuck Palahniuk (suggested by skeptikitty)

Paper Towns by John Green (suggested by revelsinmalevolence)

The Flora Segunda series by Ysabeau S. Wilce (suggested by revelsinmalevolence)

Pigtopia by Kitty Fitzgerald (suggested by veritaspeck)

The Circle of Magic quartet by Tamora Pierce (suggested by fromshadows)

7th Sigma by Steven Gould (suggested by fromshadows)

The Henry Reed series by Keith Robertson (suggested by fromshadows)

The Dragonslayer’s Apprentice by David Calder and Stieg Retlin (suggested by fromshadows)

The Chronicles of Prydain series by Lloyd Alexander

Thank you for your question!

As a professor, may I ask you what you think about fanfiction?

I think fanfiction is literature and literature, for the most part, is fanfiction, and that anyone that dismisses it simply on the grounds that it’s derivative knows fuck-all about literature and needs to get the hell off my lawn.

Most of the history of Western literature (and probably much of non-Western literature, but I can’t speak to that) is adapted or appropriated from something else.  Homer wrote historyfic and Virgil wrote Homerfic and Dante wrote Virgilfic (where he makes himself a character and writes himself hanging out with Homer and Virgil and they’re like “OMG Dante you’re so cool.”  He was the original Gary Stu).  Milton wrote Bible fanfic, and everyone and their mom spent the Middle Ages writing King Arthur fanfic.  In the sixteenth century you and another dude could translate the same Petrarchan sonnet and somehow have it count as two separate poems, and no one gave a fuck.  Shakespeare doesn’t have a single original plot—although much of it would be more rightly termed RPF—and then John Fletcher and Mary Cowden Clarke and Gloria Naylor and Jane Smiley and Stephen Sondheim wrote Shakespeare fanfic.  Guys like Pope and Dryden took old narratives and rewrote them to make fun of people they didn’t like, because the eighteenth century was basically high school.  And Spenser!  Don’t even get me started on Spenser.

Here’s what fanfic authors/fans need to remember when anyone gives them shit: the idea that originality is somehow a good thing, an innately preferable thing, is a completely modern notion.  Until about three hundred years ago, a good writer, by and large, was someone who could take a tried-and-true story and make it even more awesome.  (If you want to sound fancy, the technical term is imitatio.)  People were like, why would I wanna read something about some dude I’ve never heard of?  There’s a new Sir Gawain story out, man!  (As to when and how that changed, I tend to blame Daniel Defoe, or the Modernists, or reality television, depending on my mood.)

I also find fanfic fascinating because it takes all the barriers that keep people from professional authorship—barriers that have weakened over the centuries but are nevertheless still very real—and blows right past them. Producing literature, much less circulating it, was something that was well nigh impossible for the vast majority of people for most of human history.  First you had to live in a culture where people thought it was acceptable for you to even want to be literate in the first place.  And then you had to find someone who could teach you how to read and write (the two didn’t necessarily go together).  And you needed sufficient leisure time to learn.  And be able to afford books, or at least be friends with someone rich enough to own books who would lend them to you.  Good writers are usually well-read and professional writing is a full-time job, so you needed a lot of books, and a lot of leisure time both for reading and writing.  And then you had to be in a high enough social position that someone would take you seriously and want to read your work—to have access to circulation/publication in addition to education and leisure time.  A very tiny percentage of the population fit those parameters (in England, which is the only place I can speak of with some authority, that meant from 500-1000 A.D.: monks; 1000-1500: aristocratic men and the very occasional aristocratic woman; 1500-1800: aristocratic men, some middle-class men, a few aristocratic women; 1800-on, some middle-class women as well). 

What’s amazing is how many people who didn’t fit those parameters kept writing in spite of the constant message they got from society that no one cared about what they had to say, writing letters and diaries and stories and poems that often weren’t discovered until hundreds of years later.  Humans have an urge to express themselves, to tell stories, and fanfic lets them.  If you’ve got access to a computer and an hour or two to while away of an evening, you can create something that people will see and respond to instantly, with a built-in community of people who care about what you have to say.

I do write the occasional fic; I wish I had the time and mental energy to write more.  I’ll admit I don’t read a lot of fic these days because most of it is not—and I know how snobbish this sounds—particularly well-written.  That doesn’t mean it’s “not good”—there are a lot of reasons people read fic and not all of them have to do with wanting to read finely crafted prose.  That’s why fic is awesome—it creates a place for all kinds of storytelling.  But for me personally, now that my job entails reading about 1500 pages of undergraduate writing per year, when I have time to read for enjoyment I want it to be by someone who really knows what they’re doing.  There’s tons of high-quality fic, of course, but I no longer have the time and patience to go searching for it that I had ten years ago. 

Ahead of his thriller debut, novelist John Niven pulls on a pair of leather gloves and salutes fiction’s greatest serial killers

Murder. We’ve all done it. Writers that is. Ever since man first gathered round the campfire to swap stories, narrators have known that someone getting bumped off at the right moment raises the stakes and keeps people on their toes.

Having written four novels in the vein of what could be loosely described as ‘black comedy’, I am publishing my first ‘straight’ thriller this month. Cold Hands is a revenge story set in snowy Canada. It’s about a man whose past catches up with him in the bloodiest way possible. When I first pitched the book to my agent, she said, “That’s marvellous. Like Titus Andronicus meets Misery.” Nicely put, I thought – Shakespeare’s most violent play meets Stephen King’s tensest novel.

Of course, I make no claims for the book being as good as either of those, but her comparison got me thinking about how long readers have been in thrall to characters with blood on their hands. So here are 10 of my favourites…

Since I think it’s usually best to learn by analysis and example, I decided to share this. Plus, it’s rather interesting. To read the article in full, click the header!

The setting of any scene within your writing can do a lot more than create a space for your characters to move around in. Here’s how you can make your setting work harder:

Reveal Character: If this is a personal space to your character then everything there can reveal character, from the photos they have on their wall to their choice of cutlery. If this is an unfamiliar place for your character, what in particular do they notice about it; what do they find strange, what do they find familiar?

Reveal Time/Place: Your choice of setting can be used to instantly transport your reader to a particular time or place. Even in fantasy/futuristic settings your choice of surroundings and objects can denote country and culture, while your choice of technology can suggest a particular period of history.

Reveal Genre: Certain settings are synonymous with particular genres and can pull your reader straight into your writing.

Reveal Mood: There are certain genres, such as horror, that use this more than others, but time of day, weather, temperature can all be used to reveal mood. Think about how the setting effects the mood of your characters.

Reveal/Conceal Plot: You can place items that will become important later on in your settings. If someone gets shot at the end, where is that gun at the beginning? In the same way, you can also hide plot items, or set up for surprise twists later on.

the third in a series of presentations I did about Creative Writing for students in my school who were interested in it (I’m in the business, so I was asked to talk about the things I’ve learned since my work was noticed). 

I’m willing to send my presentations to those who want them :) apart from this I did one on creative writing in general and one on character crafting. 

He lumbered to his feet and staggered back inside the broken down RV. Paul bent the handle on the fridge and frowned at the barren shelves. The last of his six-pack stared back at him. The old garage should be open by now, he thought, flicking his stinging eyeballs up at the clock.

Paul squinted. "Damn thing must be broke again," he muttered. He checked his watch. Glancing back and forth between the clock and the cracked screen on his Timex, Paul scratched his bald head.

The times were identical.

He moved to the front, squeezed behind the wheel and turned on the engine. A soft ding echoed in the motor home and the digital clock blinked 6:20. Beside the numbers, the tiny letters read AM. Paul looked up. He froze. Last night's beer binge churned in his round belly like his stomach had come alive all of a sudden, like a den of snakes slithered awake all at once.

"What the..." the rest of his words fell away.The sun hadn't moved and the Sedona desert seemed as if it still slept. 

The news reports said that time had stopped. All the scientist came up with their cock and bull stories. But a week later, the sky outside his RV hadn't changed, it was still 4 o'clock in the afternoon in Paris, France and in some place called Christchurch, it was past midnight.