Category: Contributor Article

Guest post: lesson 1 by David Kummer

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Welcome to this lesson of David Kummer’s writing course. That’s me, by the way. If you have any questions, comments, concerns, success stories, or just something fun to say, email me at davidkummer7@gmail.com. I’d love to talk about anything and everything, especially if that everything has to do with books, basketball, or Chinese food. I am a teenager, after all. So that’s that! Head on down and read what might be the best writing course of your life, but also might be the worst 😉 You won’t know until you try!

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SWAPPING GENRES by Andrew Richardson

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I approached writing ‘The Door into War’ with some trepidation. On one hand, it
was a story I wanted to write with a plot I was pleased with. On the other hand, my
previous novels have all been firmly squarely horror or historical fantasy genres. Writing
a time travel thriller was a complete change for me, especially as my reading knowledge
of time travel and thrillers is limited, and as a writer is zero.
Putting together ‘The Door into War’ led me to wondering, what are the benefits
to a writer of switching genres? And what are the drawbacks?
In my case, having written a lot of horror where tension is key I have at least
some experience of maintaining suspense. I’ve also got a background in archaeology so I
made my main character an archaeologist, and made archaeology an important part of the
story which gave me something familiar to work around. I write occasional erotic shorts,
which I found a help with the need to show characters’ emotions and reactions to each
other.
It was also a refreshing challenge to try something completely different, and I
hope this enjoyment comes over in the novel.
Because I didn’t know the thriller genre I suppose there’s a possibility that in my
naivety I might have brought something new to it – but that’s probably wishful thinking!
But, genre-swapping isn’t all plain sailing. I’m pretty sure I’ll have made some
genre-specific mistakes, and I probably missed some things that thriller readers will
expect, or misjudged the pacing and similar.
When writing historical fantasy or horror I usually have an idea of whether or not
what I’m doing is any good – or at least whether it’s good above the line enough to be
picked up by a publisher. I didn’t have that same feel for ‘The Door into War.’ In fact, as

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Living Dangerously: get closer to crime-thriller author Frank Westworth

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Living Dangerously: get closer to crime-thriller author Frank Westworth

 

While readers get to grips with his new collection of quick thrillers, author Frank Westworth pauses in between projects to chat about what he writes, and why. And what he reads, and where his characters come from, and which kinds of Kevlar can actually stop bullets…

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Crime Division: Seven Life Hacks for Self-defense, Plus One You’ll Never Use By Lily Black

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How did that title work for you? Was it click-baity enough? Because the unfortunate reality is that most people start slinking off around the corner as soon as the subject of self-defense comes up. However, I’m determined to make this as painless as possible for you all and have broken down the pages and pages of things I’d like to say on the subject into just a few bullet points for you—and your characters, for the authors out there—to remember.

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Historical Division: 1876-Not Just a Year by Khristina Atkinson

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When starting to write my historical romance, Hopelessly, Completely, MADLY in Love, I choose the year 1876 for a simple enough reason.  It’s the hundred-year anniversary of the independence of America.  I ended up not mentioning this significant fact, because my character, Lexi Donovan, was dealing with some trying issues when the celebration would have rolled around.

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Based on a True Story – How Can It Be Real? by Michael Allan Scott

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How Can It Be Real?

As an author of supernatural thrillers, it’s a question I’ve heard a time or two before.

In my experience, the single most important aspect of good storytelling is what I call the “Reality Factor.” We’ve all read a book, seen a movie, that should have worked but didn’t. There are a ton of factors that may contribute to its failure, but at the core, I’m confident you’ll find a lack of reality as the main culprit.

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Historical Division: Uncovering the Underworld by Brian McKinley

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UNCOVERING THE UNDERWORLD

When I began planning my historic gangster vampire novel Drawing Dead, I knew that I was in for a lot of research. However, what surprised me was the amount of digging and sifting through contradictory information I had to do. I’d always been interested in the gangsters of the 1920s and 30s, and I thought I had a fairly solid grip on the major figures of the period.

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Historical Division: Where is Heaven? By Edwin Herbert

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Millennia ago the majority of people not only believed in Heaven but could point it out for you. Beyond the clouds lay the mysterious workings of the celestial vault, and the earth was widely perceived as a flat disc positioned in the center of the cosmos. The Book of Daniel (4:11), for example, mentions a vision of a great tree reaching into the heavens that “could be seen to the ends of the earth.”

Divine beings were believed to rule the nearest discernible heavenly bodies, and the starry backdrop appeared to be a single stratum of lights in the sky. Genesis 1:14-17 states that God attached the stars to the firmament, like a diamond-studded canopy. In fact, it was thought a sufficiently powerful earthquake could shake them loose and send them plummeting to earth. According to this view, the underworld lay quite literally beneath the earth where the sun paid a nightly visit. Continue reading “Historical Division: Where is Heaven? By Edwin Herbert” →

Crime Division: Medications as a Murder Weapon (in Fiction writing, Of Course) Joynell Schultz, PharmD, RPh

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Hmmm… You have someone to kill. You need a creative way, and the old-fashioned gun, knife, rope, or Pillow Suffocation simply won’t do. Using a medication sounds intriguing. In the alphabet soup of drugs, which one makes the perfect instrument of death?

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Writer’s Craft: Cruel Claws: Describing the Killer’s Hands by Rayne Hall

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To increase suspense in a scene where a dangerous person is about to do something nasty, slow down the pace and describe their hands. This is perfect for when the evil overlord signs the order to exterminate the children, or when the torturer readies his instruments.

 

This technique works especially well in thrillers. Show the killer’s (or the suspect’s) hands, especially when the point-of-view character is helpless to do anything. This will send creepy shivers across the reader’s skin.

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