Nathan Bransford - The Forums

While going through my manuscript over and over...and over......and over, I started skimming over parts, knowing the words by heart. I'm sure it happens to all of us (at least I hope it's not just me). I found it really helpful to use a program called Natural Reader. It turns text into speech, and m...

Dear (Agent name): Dominic Taylor is able to do strange things, such as opening locked doors and passing by security cameras undetected. He’s never been able to explain his powers. When he discovers that one of his classmates, Jennifer, has these powers too, he follows her, hoping to find some answe...

Title: I'm a Nobody Genre: YA Fantasy 250 Words Hide. I obeyed the voice in my head without question. The classroom door opened easily despite being locked. I closed it silently and turned to the dark room. Moments later the sound of footsteps came from the hall. They were fast and sharp. They grew ...

Shock and sympathy mostly. He isn't major so the emotional loss probably won't be that much. I want the reader to worry about the effects his death will have on the major problems. How will they survive if their major weapon is gone? Maybe anger that people care more about him as a tool than a perso...

My characters don't have any real connection with him before he's found. I was trying to keep it simple, so I said they were looking for him. Actually they were looking for a weapon, but the weapon was a person, and when he dies they lose a very powerful advantage. All of his development is done bet...

In my WIP I have my characters searching for a very important person. They finally find the person near the end of the novel, and it looks like everything is going to be peachy. Then the person dies in the next chapter. His death is a huge disaster, but doesn't have the impact I had hoped for. Does ...

Nick, I have to disagree with you about the new systems. There are some very good games for them, and some not so good ones. The same can be said about every system. For Wii, Legend of Zelda Twilight Princess and Super Smash Bros Brawl were great games. For Xbox 360, Lost Odyssey and Dragon age Orig...

I'll second Terry Brooks and the Mortal Instruments. If you don't like the slow pace and long sentances of the Shannara series, try Terry Brooks's Word and Void Series, and his Magic Kingdom of Landover Series. A couple I would add is The Lost Years of Merlin by T.A. Barron, The Pendragon Series (No...

I write YA fantasy. I also read it. Unfortunately, that seems to describe alot of people, so I have some competition.

I stayed up all night writing, and finished the last three chapters at six in the morning. I promptly jumped up and shouted, waking up my family. I then fell asleep.

Any comments on anything to do with craft much appreciated. The young Canadian couple waiting for the bus in front of their budget hotel doesn’t know that two prostitutes are riding on the tour to Mexico. If they knew, the young man might shrug and smirk; the young woman might balk, refuse to board...

A post about text to speech software: http://williammjones.blogspot.com/

Pretty sure this is waaaaay too wordy. Tear it apart, please. Please please please. --- Dear AGENT OF AWESOME, The field trip to America’s Stonehenge should have been enjoyable. Except Iolanthe’s scholarly buzz dissipates with every I’m-better-than-you vibe that emanates from primo-jock, Vidar. The...

I think it has to do with the main idea. If you had a book about a kid taming a dragon, you probably wouldn't want to submit it to the agent that represented Eragon, even if the plot was different.

I tested five different sections from my WIP and they all came back David Foster Wallace. Another one of my projects came back as Dan Brown.