Time Is a Flighty Thing…

…And I have indeed not noticed it passing until it has gone. I had planned to write one 'last' blog post before I gave birth - but, ha, that didn't happen. Not to help the matter, our little one arrived a week early - but, though smaller than expected (by me), they've been in perfect …

Silence – But Not By My Fault

My fair greetings to the world! What an absence it has been and I certainly plan to explain all that – but as per the title I stand that it was not my fault. I had a laptop failure a few months ago – I am currently taking this down on The Husband’s, which in …

NaNo-Not-Mo

A couple of weeks back and a few posts back, I mentioned that I am delving back into my Steampunk novel, H, after a couple of false starts with writing the third I my time-travel trilogy – Because H feels so much more polished, so much easier to slip into with edits. But that might …

On Blogging

Once again, I said I would get back into blogging or at least some kind of blogging schedule, but it doesn't seem to have happened. There are those days we pass by and then look back on the quizzically. As in - how do they pass so quickly? I do keep saying it (!), but I have …

100 Days to Go (AKA, I Don’t Have a Clue)

I am eternally impressed by other bloggers. Bloggers who have time and bloggers who have panache to say the things that I kind of just flop about like a dead fish saying. The lovely Carrie-Ann Dring of Something Definitely Happened started her blog to document the British wedding. So to speak. People get married every …

On Originality

(Or, its existence, which if is, is scarce) What makes your novel unique? They say it a lot, as if originality is a rite of passage a novel must go through. Chances are, though, not much. We all know the problem the modern writer faces: of writing the novel of our heart only to find …

7 Quick Takes – Essays, Time-Management and God

Let's pop over to This Ain't the Lyceum to see how everybody's been doing this week. ~1~ Firstly, it is this little blog's fourth birthday! I'll admit that it's been a less-impressive run than the last couple of years in terms of blogging, but on the other hand, I have got things done and my …

Barely an Hour to Write‏

You may have noticed that I haven't been on the blog lately - and sporadically at best - but I have barely had any time lately to write, let alone conjure up as blog post from somewhere. I'm in my final year of my undergrad, and I've been busy with study reading. Factor in the …

Girardoni Kata – A Steampunk Martial Art

An interesting article about how writers can and must fit their writing, for instance fight scenes, to their created technology. Here, specifically, Steampunk martial arts.

Nick Travers

Since posting my article on the Girardoni gun, ‘Steampunk Warfare – The Real Deal’, I find myself inventing a whole new martial art to accommodate the weapon.

As a writer, I love the way a simple decision can drive the development of a whole story world. In this case it is the adoption of a certain gun mechanism, but it could equally be a political, institutional, religious, technological, hierarchical or social idea, just as our response to these things change the real world around us.

A story world must hang together logically for the whole thing to feel real to the reader. To give your story an ‘other-worldy’ feel, just turn a social norm on its head and follow the logical consequences of that decision.

The other day, I took the family to see the Mary Rose Museum in Portsmouth, UK. The Mary Rose is a Tudor warship…

View original post 549 more words

Time in Fiction: Addressing the Timey-Wimey, Troublesome Truths

For all you temporal scientists (!) out there like me, Victoria over at The Crimson League discusses the use of time in fiction – and, as I well know, the difficulties that can arise from misplacing time in one’s novel.

Creative Writing with the Crimson League

Time is such a crazy and troublesome thing, both in life and in writing. Some among us (well, the Whovians anyway) might even describe it as “wibbly wobbly” or “timey-wimey.”

Time issues have tripped me up in various drafts of my novels. Handling time in fiction–where the rules of time in the real world aren’t always at play, especially in my genre of fantasy–can be a tricky task. We can expand and contract and change how time works to a greater or lesser extent when writing.

While this is fun, and wonderful, and one of the most creative ways we can execute artistic license, it can also be difficult to keep track of. To keep under control.

Here are some ways time in fiction has caused me problems, or ways I try to be aware of time as a factor when I’m writing. They’re nothing to panic over. Just some…

View original post 705 more words