on Live Write Thrive:

If you’re writing a story in which your character will need to evolve internally to achieve his goal, a cohesive and well-planned character arc will be vital to its success.

This type of arc (a change arc) requires internal conflict, which will provide opportunities for your character to adapt and grow.

But first, let’s quickly summarize what the change arc is and what it looks like.

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on Just Publishing Advice:

Positive writing always helps you communicate better with your readers.

All it takes is a few simple grammar or vocabulary changes, and it’s such an easy habit to adopt.

When we speak, we can use negative sentences with facial expressions that indicate a positive tone.

But in writing, you only have your words to convey a positive or negative sentiment.

on Fiction University:

One of science fiction’s strengths is showing future possibilities and what life might be like in them.

There was a time wherein cellphones were getting steadily smaller, from the brick-sized majesty of the Motorola DynaTac (1983) to the Mobira Cityman (1987) to 1989’s Motorola MicroTac (about the size of a pack of chalkboard eraser) to the rugged Nokias of the ’90s and early Naughts. There was even a joke about the trend in the movie Zoolander (2001), and sci-fi writers were racing ahead with ideas about how small phones could go. Subdermal skull implants with antennas grown like coral along your spine? Sure!

The trend shattered in 2007 with the introduction of the iPhone, and today’s model can barely fit in your pocket much less under your skin. Take heart, soothsayers! Not even the dreamers at Star Trek, a group that ostensibly predicted the flip phone…

I was just writing the other day about the 1339 monk who wrote about the discovery of America. Now, analysis of wood from timber-framed buildings in the L’Anse aux Meadows in Newfoundland shows a Norse-built settlement over 1,000 years ago – 471 years before Columbus.

As the Guardian and Science News report, the Icelandic sagas – oral histories written down hundreds of years later – tell of a leader named Leif Erikson. The recent finding corroborates two Icelandic sagas – the Saga of the Greenlanders and the Saga of Erik the Red – that recorded attempts to establish a settlement in Vinland. Also known as Leif the Lucky, he was the son of Erik the Red, who was the founder of the first Norse settlements in Greenland. According to the Saga of the Icelanders, Leif established a Norse settlement at Vinland, which is usually interpreted as being coastal…

on Fiction University:

I recently completed an edit for a client, Cordia Pearson, whom I’d gently persuaded to let me introduce Oxford commas into her list phrases. The reasoning for this is that using the Oxford (aka serial) comma never does any harm, and can prevent serious confusion. Consider the sentence,

My parents, Jesus, and Lady Gaga taught me all I know.

If you remove the serial comma after Jesus, the meaning changes, and not for the better.

After I’d delivered the completed edit, Cordia—who was going through my every edit with admirable diligence, reading each chapter aloud as she went—emailed me to ask why I’d not introduced an Oxford comma in the last clause of the sentence,

Wish I could wail and rend my clothing as so many others do, families who have lost sons and daughters, brothers and sisters or lovers.

When I read her email, I…

on Writer Unboxed:

Self-promotion isn’t the most famous naughty s-word, but it can still feel like a bad word to today’s authors. I hate self-promotion, you might say. I’m so sick of talking about myself on social media.With more and more options to reach readers directly comes an expectation that authors will do more and more to reach those readers themselves, often without publisher assistance.

So! How do you sell books without a single self-promotional tweet, post, or video?

Simple. In most cases, you actually shouldn’t be promoting yourself. If the goal is to sell books — or at least make people you don’t know personally curious enough about your book(s) to take action — you are not the product. “Buy my book!” doesn’t work if the reader doesn’t know you or know anything about the book in question.

Instead of self-promotion, think of the path to getting…