Themes are the underlying identity of a piece of fiction. In fairy tales, the prevailing theme is usually summed up in the final paragraph of the story. But in most fiction the theme is more of an underlying current, directing the reader to focus their attention of certain details. Ambitious works may use their themes […]
Category: Feature
Grim Curio Writing Goals – A Deep Dive into the Ideas Behind The Process
When writing any work, it’s a good idea to establish goals. Some authors may focus their efforts on exploring the entire life of a character in a compelling way (Patrick Rothfuss and Name of the Wind). Another may focus on terse, expressive sentences and a relationship between father and son (Cormac McCarthy and The Road). Another […]
On Motivation: How to Keep On Writing No Matter What
When I talk about writing, the most common question I’m asked is, ‘How do you stay motivated enough to finish a novel?’ That’s a tough question, especially when talking to new writers. Until recently, I never really thought about it, it was just something I did. But over the last month, I’ve been hyper aware of […]
Fifteen Years A WriterA Short History of S.C. Barrus
It’s been nearly a month since I started this blog chronicling the production of my novel Grim Curio. I haven’t spent much of that time talking about myself, and that’s been deliberate. But today I want to do something different and share the writing journey I’ve gone through over the last fifteen years. High School […]
41 Questions to Improve Your Writing and Critiquing
When refining, rewriting, editing and critiquing, what should you be looking for? Sentence structure? Character believability? Setting? Sometimes it can be a bit much to keep everything in your head, so I’ve written the following list of things I look for (or need to remind myself to pay attention to) in order to make my […]
From Mind to Paper: Creating a Character
Above: Ginko from Mushi Shi. Writing is a process. Prose don’t appear on paper perfectly executed. First drafts are a spew of consciousness, a firehose of concepts splattered haphazardly with the wrong words in the wrong order, the wrong setting with the wrong details, the wrong character featuring the wrong motivation. But you have to […]