Norm Sherman of The Drabblecast (drabblecast.org) has let me know they’ve accepted my Drabble (a 100-word story) “Wall of Gloves”. (I say “accepted” and not “sold” since there is no payment for drabbles.) If you don’t know The Drabblecast, they run slightly offbeat, short speculative fiction. They ran “All In” by my friend Peter Atwood […]
Matt Moore's Blog
What’s your greatest day and what does that say about you? Think about the realization and now apply it to your main character in a story. You just might learn something about your protagonist.
Social media does not require you to define a target audience at the exclusion of others, like traditional media. Rather, generate quality content and let those who are interested find you.
Stephen Humphrey at NEWSFix gives Tesseracts Thirteen a great review/examination on its themes of horror and character. “The stories… suggest there is more to the national psyche than tall trees and weather. They don’t so much make the landscape the character, as the familiar CanLit trope goes, as they make characters the characters. The supernatural […]
Twitter is neither push nor pull, but “put” communications where you put ideas in front of your followers. By understanding how to “put” valuable content online, you can become a trusted source of information and attract followers beyond your initial group.
Using Twitter as another marketing channel is bound to fail because it does not respect the current state of the Web. Users are in control and do not want to be marketed to. Plus, anything you say can be found via search, so what can you say that is timely and might not be something one would search for but still needs to know?
A brief celebratory note that my short story “The Machinery of Government” has been accepted into Tesseracts Fourteen, an all-Canadian anthology of speculative fiction. Set in the near future, this is an SF piece about our obligations as people versus the duty our jobs sometimes force upon us. And Ottawa getting shelled by artillery. I’ll […]
When you’re first draft is complete, it’s time for editing, re-writes and revisions. Start big: major plot blocks, stages of your character’s arc, staying on theme. Then, spend time on detailed elements liking character voice, setting description and your narrative voice.
In part one, I described how to begin outlining a novel. To summarize, create a grid describing characters, plot and setting and add in everything you can think of. Have a character that fascinates you but not sure what role she’ll play? Put her in. A subway fight, but don’t know who’s fighting or why? […]
I used to hate outlining, even though I know I’ve spent too much time on revisions or working on first drafts I eventually abandon. So, I gave it a dry, developing a hybrid method that worked well for me, and I am now hooked. In this two part post, I describe how to outline a novel.