We’ve all heard the saying, ‘show, don’t tell’. It’s a piece of writing advice that’s been thrown around so much that it’s become a common catchphrase. No article or video about writing advice is complete without including “show, don’t tell”. Go to any book, filter for 1-star reviews, and there’s a high likelihood at least…
One of the decisions I’d made from the very beginning was that Petition was going to be single POV. I didn’t want to fall into the typical epic fantasy author trap of POV bloat that would land me in revision hell; I wanted to write a clean draft of a tightly-focused narrative. (By the way,…
Chapter 10 is interesting to analyze in terms of its construction. On the surface, it seems like a pretty boring scene. It’s just Rahelu, Lhorne, and Dharyas chilling out over lunch in a tavern with the rest of the Ideth applicants. Not much plot happens. That’s deliberate. In Jim Butcher’s scene-and-sequel terms (though I don’t…
Chapter 9 is the third-longest chapter in the entire book at around 6,700 words. (The longest chapter, if you’re curious, is Chapter 22 which has the action climax of the book. The second-longest is Chapter 21 which is the emotional build-up.) I remember being incredibly nervous while writing the first draft because this is the…
The main problem I had created for myself with the first challenge is that while scavenger hunts can be fun to do, they are not fun to read. I’d also set myself up to have twenty tokens in play—thank goodness I came to my senses during revisions and whittled them down to ten. I had…