A Thistle in the Wind

In the past, we’ve talked about character archetypes: your villains, your brooding anti-heroes, your morally grey favs—I could go on. But what we haven’t talked about is how to make the personalities of certain characters fun. And I know, you’re probably thinking: what’s she on about? To that, I say—here me out. In today’s blog, we’re going to take a closer look at a type of character that can easily come across as boring. Maybe it’s because we can’t have them say much or be reactive like other characters. Maybe they just don’t like to go out and so, at face value, you’d say that they don’t offer much. Not…

I think there’s no secret that I love reading thrillers, mysteries—anything really with a good twist. So, as we’re exploring the different genres of writing and how you can become a better writer, I thought it might be interesting to talk about how to write thrillers. And like all the different genre guides we’ve covered so far, there’s actually a lot more that goes into writing thrillers than you’d think. Seriously, I’ve always thought that I couldn’t handle genres like murder mysteries and thrillers because of how amazing they are, but now—well, we’ve got the formula, so who knows? Maybe one day, after I’m done with my manuscript, the muse…

As you may know, I’ve spent the better part of this year trying to figure out how to edit my manuscript. That’s high-key why I’ve been talking about writing a book a lot. Because I’m living it, and it’s been…a journey (to put it lightly). And here’s what I’ve learned: no matter how brilliant your plot is, if you can’t execute it well, it falls flat. The difference between a story that keeps you up at night and one you abandon on page 50? Writing techniques. When you read a book that pulls you in completely—where you forget you’re reading words on a page—that’s not magic. It’s the result of…

I’ll be honest, I’m not a fantasy reader. Apart from the classics, I don’t really have any fantasy books I’m into right now, and I think that might have to do with the fact that I feel like a lot of modern ‘fantasy’ books always have a more dominant subgenre that people seem to gush about.  Yeah, I know. It’s a bit snobby, but that’s my vibe around. I feel the same about science fiction too, by the way. In my opinion, a lot of sci-fis these days are just meh. It’s hard to find a good one. And I guess these feelings around these two genres come from the…

Dystopian fiction is, without a doubt, an amazing genre. It’s not the kind I pick all the time because it’s so easy to mess it up (I’m looking at you, Divergent). But when I do read dystopian books, they quickly end up becoming my favourite books of all time. A classic example of a dystopian story is, of course, 1984 by George Orwell. It’s hands down one of my favourite books of all time, second only to The Alchemist. There’s a lot of science fiction overlap with this genre too. In fact, I’d argue that the Remembrance of Earth’s Past series by Cixin Liu kind of becomes dystopian, especially as…

Let’s be honest: one of the most fun parts of a fantasy book is the introduction of magic. Seriously, if your story’s blurb has an intriguing magic system, I’m reading it. That’s how I wound up picking up Air Awakens at the beginning of the year. Sure, I abandoned the series because of how quickly the world and plot disintegrated, but I stuck around for three books because the magic system was so good. But that’s the thing about magic systems, isn’t it? It can drive your entire plot if it’s good. Of course, your story shouldn’t solely depend on it but that’s how critical a magic system can be.…

I grew up reading a lot of book series. In fact, the very books I read, the Oxford Reading Tree series, were—cue the drum roll—a series. So was the Mallory Towers series and the wizarding world series I read (which we don’t talk about here because the author’s unhinged) well into my teens. It’s safe to say that book series have dominated a large part of my reading list. And I bet it’s the same for a lot of you. We could talk about book series all day—maybe weeks, actually. There’s the Hunger Games, Twilight, A Song of Ice and Fire, Percy Jackson, Bridgerton, Shatter Me, and so many others.…