Nathan Bransford - The Forums

First draft of first chapter of a sort of post-cyberpunk/absurdist-dystopian thing. I know it goes all over the place, but that's kind of the point. Simon was parked on an overturned laundry basket in front of his bedroom screen, which was set to ‘mirror’; it was really just a cam on the frame feedi...

For some bizarre reason, it hadn't occurred to me to use ads as epigrams for chapter headings, but yeah, that's the kind of thing I'm talking about. In a world where pop-ups, phishers, and spam-bots have come into the real world, they're treated as dangerous vermin infesting the cities, a bit like z...

So I'm writing a book about how smartphones have given people short attention spans, advertising is infiltrating every part of life, and social networking has increased our communication with others but at the cost of real interaction, replacing it with viral videos and acronyms. I had an idea, poss...

Literally might help--I'd know to look up from my phone. (I'd just like to mention that the comment reminded me of one of my favorite parts of "Gulliver's Travels", on the flying island of Laputa when the aristocrats had to get their servants to whap them with sticks so they know when they...

Having lost my muse for both my alternating WIPS (one a YA cosmic horror/historical mystery, the other a fantasy novel based on American folklore instead of European), I was thinking about what to write, and I've decided I might try writing something not just for entertainment, but also with some so...

If I were a famous columnist or essayist, I would have written one on just this subject long ago, as I have noticed it to be an emerging theme in the depths of culture today; for lack of an established term, I call it "awesome-ism." It's the sort of fiction where traditional laws of subtle...

I'm in desperate need of a beta-reader that would want to read my novel. I've passed out manuscripts to everyone I know that would take it, and I haven't gotten much useful feedback. "I JUST NEED SOME SPACE", 113,000--I know it's long, but sci-fi is supposed to be epic, damn it. Anybody ca...

My biggest proof of nerdhood was when I read Eric Partridge's slang dictionary cover to cover. It was bigger than most novels. Also, I usually keep an unabridged dictionary within reach of my kitchen table--yes, I have multiple unabridged dictionaries, the biggest being two phonebook-sized hardback ...

I'm such a nerd I once received props from a hardcore player because I was teaching myself how to play D&D as research for a novel.

I was all for the original "Pride and Prejudice and Zombies," but I think the imitations by other authors are getting a little too strange. Tom Sawyer, maybe, but Lake Woebegone? Star Trek? Incidentally, if anybody is a writer of this kind of stuff, may I suggest "Baron Munchhausen&qu...

I usually warm up by doing a bit of brainstorming, usually with some irrelevant creativity prompt like "name the suits for a deck of cards in a fantasy novel" or "name ten fictional cocktails the alcoholic historian baffles the bartender with." I've developed dystopian breakfast ...

I actually had been picturing the waitress pretty young, probably early twenties; there's a bit in the exposition that follows establishing the story as happening around five or ten years from now. She called him 'hon' because I've lived my whole life in the American South--all waitresses, from high...

I know this doesn't seem like the beginning of a sci-fi novel, just trust me. Would you keep reading? “Rough day, hon?” the waitress asked Shapiro, her smile beaming like xenon headlights on a dark country road. She was awfully perky for a night-shift waitress in an off-ramp diner. Considering how S...

So I wrote an amazing book, but someone that read it took a time-machine back to the late 1970's and stole my ideas for a series of influential novels. Now everybody thinks HE came up with them first, just because his books were published before I was born. I know we recently discussed what to do wh...

Turns out the book I'm trying to get published is probably too long--118,000, specifically. (I'm working on shortening it.) I had no idea this was too long; I've read up on various writing topics, but all I ever saw about word count was that if you've got more than a certain amount, it's a novel, an...