Nathan Bransford - The Forums

Hey all,

With all the hubbub of self-publishing and the uncertainty of the future of publishing, so many blogs have put aside advice on writing and turned to advice/updates on publishing. While this is all and good, it's not where I am in my career right now. I'd like to learn more about craft and development and tips to help make my writing shine. What blogs do y'all follow that focus on the art of writing rather than publishing?

I strongly strongly strongly recommend reading Margo's blog (yes, Bransforumer Margo!) Her posts on craft are amazing and so easy to follow. She breaks down high level concepts into easy to understand and incorporate ideas and advice. I'm a big fan.

http://urbanpsychopomp.blogspot.com/

I second Sommer's suggestion. I have a writing crush on Donald Maass and Margo's blogs pay attention to Maass's suggestions. I feel fortunate that she's willing to share some of her conversations/interactions she's had with him.

As for other craft blogs, that's a good question. I'm curious to see what suggestions others have. World building, character/story development, edits/revisions, there is so much information to share.

You might want to check out Hannah Moskowitz's blog Invincible Summer. A few moths back, she did a series of blogs about theme and motif that I re-read on a fairly regular basis.

Garsh...thanks, guys. *blush*

I also would like to add +1 to Margo's blog... then let's see... He is not writing a blog, but he has excellent advices, great knowledge and he is also here on Nathan's forum; Polymath.

Janet's blog (QueryShark) - Excellent to learn some tricks for query letters.
http://queryshark.blogspot.com (She also has another blog, http://jetreidliterary.blogspot.com/, but that's not just about writing as it's rather her personal blog.).

Jessica Faust and Kim Lionetti's blog (BookEnds LLC.) is also helping in queries the most.
http://bookendslitagency.blogspot.com/

Eric's blog (It's rather giving you some insight about how things are working)
http://bookendslitagency.blogspot.com/

Then, it's not a blog, but you may find interesting articles here...
http://www.associatedcontent.com/creati ... ng/?cat=47

And finally, you may find very good articles and blog entries here...
http://www.nathanbransford.com

(But I believe you already know this last one. :) ).

Janice Hardy (middle grade fantasy writer)
http://blog.janicehardy.com/

Juliette Wade (science fiction writer)
http://talktoyouniverse.blogspot.com/

They both post on other stuff too, but look through the archives and you'll find a lot of post about the writing side of it.

Polenth, thanks for those two suggestions. I've spent the afternoon on the Janice Hardy blog learning new topics for my ms.

Depends on what you write. Most of the blogs I follow are Kidlit related, but they still often post really helpful info about the craft of writing as a whole. Here are some of my favorites:

http://kidlit.com/

http://childrenspublishing.blogspot.com/

http://blog.liviablackburne.com/

http://notforrobots.blogspot.com/

http://thebookshelfmuse.blogspot.com/

http://www.plottopunctuation.com/blog

http://www.floggingthequill.com/

Here are my favorites:

http://betweenfactandfiction.blogspot.com/
http://storyfix.com/
http://blog.janicehardy.com/
http://wordplay-kmweiland.blogspot.com/

This is my favorite blog of all time: http://writerunboxed.com/

... and I'm kind of a fan of my own blog, A Writer's Journey at http://teralynpilgrim.blogspot.com/ . I'm just saying.

Is it stupid to point out that if you write you absolutely have to read and follow Nathan's blog? I don't know. If you're here in the forums I suppose it's safe to assume you also read his blog, but you never know.

A few others I can highly recommend:

Bryan (Ink), who is also the Sheriff of the forums: http://alchemyofwriting.blogspot.com/

The Rejectionist: http://www.therejectionist.com/

Angela and Becca @ The Bookshelf Muse: http://thebookshelfmuse.blogspot.com/

And just for fun, Hyperbole and a Half: http://hyperboleandahalf.blogspot.com/

honestly, aside from here- the site i learn the most from is sommer leigh's blog: http://sommerleigh.com/
she doesn't post about craft solely, but when she does it's amazingly helpful.

Since I started reading blogs (which hasn't been long, I admit), it seems like a lot more "industry" blogs exist than "craft" blogs. By craft blogs, I mean blogs which you could read and one of two things would happen: one, you'd have been directly inspired to write a story, or two, you would have at least thought more deeply about the necessary elements of storytelling, i.e. you'd have "exercised" your creativity.

I hope my blog does some of that. My angle is that I'm a lawyer, and I use legal issues as springboards for discussing writing.

My URL is lawthor.wordpress.com
Lawyer + Author = lawthor

Enjoy!

P.S. I wish I knew how to make my URL clickable. Help? The Url button above only inserted gobledy-goo into the message which didn't disappear when I submitted.

I would add to this Teaching Authors who put up some great exercises.
http://www.teachingauthors.com/

Lawthor wrote:Since I started reading blogs (which hasn't been long, I admit), it seems like a lot more "industry" blogs exist than "craft" blogs. By craft blogs, I mean blogs which you could read and one of two things would happen: one, you'd have been directly inspired to write a story, or two, you would have at least thought more deeply about the necessary elements of storytelling, i.e. you'd have "exercised" your creativity.

I hope my blog does some of that. My angle is that I'm a lawyer, and I use legal issues as springboards for discussing writing.

My URL is lawthor.wordpress.com
Lawyer + Author = lawthor

Enjoy!

P.S. I wish I knew how to make my URL clickable. Help? The Url button above only inserted gobledy-goo into the message which didn't disappear when I submitted.

To use the URL button, you have to have a functioning url. You'll want to add the www to: http://www.lawthor.wordpress.com or if you want to get fancy, you can do Lawyer + Author = lawthor

But to make it fancy you have to type in the BBC code manually and it looks like this, only replace the ( ) with [ ]. Hopefully that makes sense.
(url=http://lawthor.wordpress.com/)Lawyer + Author = lawthor(/url)

Emma Darwin is a bestselling historical fiction author from the UK. I attended some workshops with her and she knows her onions.

If you ever wanted to know what Psychic Distance was or how to use it to control PoV shifts, she's your lady. She also sometimes writes about ducks:

http://emmadarwin.typepad.com/