Nathan Bransford - The Forums

Attempt #3. Every time I try to edit my query, I just end up rewriting it. Maybe one of these times I'll get it right? -- It's not like Charley Kuten likes her boring retail job, but she could certainly use the extra money her potential promotion is offering. But before she can decide on whether or ...

I read the article and felt that something was a little off with it, so I sent it to my mother, who's been the technical coordinator at a public library for the last ten years. While she didn't feel comfortable being quoted exactly here on the forum, she did note that he wasn't looking at the total ...

My 28th birthday is looming on the horizon (two months minus one day away) and I've been writing ever since kindergarten. I wrote my first 'book' when I was six, which was a gripping tale about Debbie Gibson's tragic brush with amnesia. I illustrated and bound it myself, and even now it sits tucked ...

I've mused a few times on my eligibility, so to speak, to write fantasy. My first real introduction to the genre was Terry Brooks' Sword of Shannara series - I read the first trilogy in high school and loved it. I started tabletop roleplaying in college and knew what a halfling was before the Lord o...

My apologies if this is out of line, but I didn't see anything about it in the guidelines post, so I'm bumping this post. I swear I'll only do it this once.

I agree about omitting that last paragraph (or at least I have been similarly informed!). And I'm sure any agent you send your query to will automatically assume that you're willing to send the manuscript if they so request it, so that last line is unnecessary. Something that stood out at me when I ...

Thank you, polymath, for that extremely enlightening post! I quite honestly never realized there were significant differences between all those different terms. With all that in mind, perhaps the beginning of my WIP should be labeled a Prelude, rather than a Prologue. :)

I always read the prologues. The author theoretically wrote it for a reason, and I can't claim to understand the book fully if I don't read it! But I can understand how prologues can be vastly abused by a lazy author who couldn't be bothered to work the setting information into their story in the fi...

While I'm afraid I have no advice specifically for your predicament, perhaps you could consider OpenOffice in its stead? The program is more or less a fully functional, FREE version of Microsoft Office, cross-platform and very easy to use. I switched over to it entirely almost two years ago and have...

Thank you, everyone, for your very honest critique. I knew I was throwing myself to the wolves here, and I don't think I was fully prepared. -_-;; But I've tried to take everything into consideration for this second attempt - I'm beginning to feel like my story has too much to it, because cramming i...

Once upon a time, a divisive war rocked the two kingdoms of Lokhaven and Kellynnia. The elderly Kellynnian Royal Seer gave one final prophecy - that the daughter born to the Queen of Kellynnia would be the most powerful sorceress ever seen. The kingdom rallied behind the birth of the princess and fo...

When I was world-building for my WIP (fantasy novel), I had the idea of running a sort of prequel tabletop campaign in the world. I dug through the systems we had lying around (a full bookshelf in our apartment is devoted to roleplaying books) and decided on BESM. I went and came up with a list of s...

I devote my lunch break every day to writing, and that's about it. My attention is too split otherwise! I write on a netbook but have deliberately kept myself off the office wifi so I don't get distracted during my lunch. Still, even though it's slow going, it's steady progress - at five hours a wee...

I am happily and proudly a gamer - first and foremost is World of Warcraft, which I've been playing for four years and blogging about for two. :) I just finished up Dragon Age: Origins, and started replaying with two characters that aren't quite as goody two-shoes as the first one was. Final Fantasy...

Title: Around the Source Genre: YA/fantasy Word Count: 249 The door swung shut behind Charley with a final crash, an audible point of no return come a moment too late. There was no escape now, only this dreaded confrontation with the store manager himself. Jeff's purposeful closing of the door had b...