Tag: Writing Tips
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Writing Compelling Dialogue: One Author’s Process
Dialogue can make or break a story. Writing compelling dialogue is a crucial aspect of crafting engaging and believable characters in fiction. I’ve read books with too little dialogue and, consequently, found them to be snooze-fests. On the flip side, I’ve read books with too much bad dialogue, and they were virtually unreadable. My preferences…
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Five Characteristics of Great Speculative Fiction
Speculative fiction explores the unknown, the impossible, and the extraordinary. The genre (which includes fantasy, science fiction, horror, superhero fiction, dystopian, utopian, and other stories with supernatural and/or futuristic elements) allows us to venture into the uncharted territories of our imagination, and delve into worlds that challenge our understanding of what is possible. I write…
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Afrofuturism, Black Historical Romance, and more…
Page refresh: how the internet is transforming the novel (The Guardian) Towards the end of 2020, a year spent supine on my sofa consuming endless internet like a force-fed goose, I managed to finish a beautifully written debut novel: Open Water by Caleb Azumah Nelson, which comes out next month. And yet despite the entrancing descriptions, I could…
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Infographic: Punctuation Problems
Commas, semicolons, and colons…oh my! You’re not really sure which one to use, but you know your sentence needs something to help it make sense. As any writer knows, the punctuation you use can mean the difference between a clearly written sentence and a clunky sentence that makes little to no sense. Below are a…
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New Year, New Waking Writer!
Dear Reader, As we ring in 2019, we are all probably thinking about what we would like to do differently this year. Here at Waking Writer, we have had a great couple of years interviewing fabulous indie authors, showcasing new books, sharing writing tips and news from the literary world. Don’t worry…Waking Writer plans to…
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3rd Person POV: Pros and Cons
Maisie wasn’t sure if she was hearing voices outside her room or actually going crazy. Have you ever vacillated between which point-of-view to use for your story? I sure have. I’m a sucker for third-person and the old-fashioned feel of it (although, I want to be edgy enough to try second-person someday). Typically, I opt…
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