For Writers – Essays on Craft
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The Three Paragraphs That Sell Your Book (No Matter How You Publish It)
Read more / watch…: The Three Paragraphs That Sell Your Book (No Matter How You Publish It)by Elijah J Mears Time to read: It is a truth universally acknowledged that an unpublished writer in possession of a good manuscript would rather peel off their own skin than market that manuscript. But alas, no matter how you plan to publish—whether you’re going for the long slog in the querying trenches or the…
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You Have One Minute: Hook Me!
Read more / watch…: You Have One Minute: Hook Me!I’ve read thousands of submissions in the slush pile and over time I’ve gotten better and better at determining quickly if a story is a good fit. Sometimes it’s obvious in the first paragraph—I’ll still read at least the first page, but my suspicions are often proven right within that first page, that one minute…
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Elements of Flash Fiction
Read more / watch…: Elements of Flash FictionWhen I started working for Apex Magazine, one of my tasks was to take over the microfiction contest on our Patreon. That first month, I hadn’t had any role in selecting the themes, and I didn’t have much experience with microfiction–only flash. I wrote myself a list of elements to think about as I was…
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Building a Patron Economy: Empowering Creatives
Read more / watch…: Building a Patron Economy: Empowering CreativesMaybe you’ve heard of this thing called the “creator economy?” In and around 2020 it was a hot topic in technology circles. The success of existing platforms like Patreon and Kickstarter, combined with all that time we had on our hands due to the pandemic, meant artists of all kinds were finally going to be…
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For Writers: Writing the Novel – For Short Story Authors
Read more / watch…: For Writers: Writing the Novel – For Short Story AuthorsSo you’re a short story writer. You’re happy with your craft, and you already know what a short story is: It’s not a novella (generally up to 40,000 words) or a novelette (typically over 7,500 words – 19,000 words). Awards make it all the more mind-boggling when guidelines start talking about “long story” (over 15,000…
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FOR WRITERS: Steampunk as Afrofuturism
Read more / watch…: FOR WRITERS: Steampunk as AfrofuturismAfrofuturism is hot right now. Ever since Black Panther made its seismic splash, the term has been bandied about and suddenly folks are “discovering” black writers who have been out there doing the thing for years. The original “Pimp My Airship” steampunk short story was published in Apex Magazine in 2009, the beginning of what…
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FOR WRITERS: Collaborating with Others
Read more / watch…: FOR WRITERS: Collaborating with OthersI once hosted a writing date, where a bunch of authors came together at a set time to (individually) write. The experience reminded me how private I am. Everyone else had eyes glued to their screen, fingers on the keyboard silently tic tic tac tac tictictactactoc! Others furiously scrawled ideas as the muse whispered spur. I…
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FOR WRITERS: The Art of Narrative Momentum
Read more / watch…: FOR WRITERS: The Art of Narrative MomentumMoneyball by Michael Lewis provides a great study in something I think of as ‘narrative momentum’, an important facet to writing a compelling story.
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FOR WRITERS: Speculative Poetry Is Alive!
Read more / watch…: FOR WRITERS: Speculative Poetry Is Alive!The abstraction and aesthetics of poetry increasingly allow writers to infuse poetic text in their prose, sometimes in prose poetic form or as epigraphs in stories, novels, and novellas to enhance the rhythm, impact, and poeticity of the text.
