There’s nothing that churns a writer’s stomach quite like reading something he or she wrote years ago. On one hand, our old work is embarrassing, but maybe critiquing it, finding out where it went wrong, can help us grow as writers. For instance, here’s the opening paragraph of a short story I wrote back in … Continue reading After Six Years, A Writing Critique
Last week, Wired reported that, “a team of scientists in China have used a cutting-edge CRSPR technique to repair a disease-causing mutation in viable human embryos.” Aldous Huxley would be proud (or perhaps terrified). Whatever your feelings about the future of gene editing, we can all agree that articles like this are great fodder for … Continue reading Choose Your Own Science
Back in high school, I tried writing about 20’s gangsters. I did no research beyond what I’d seen in movies. I just wrote the story and turned it in to a writing workshop, ready to be showered with praises for my genius. As you might have guessed, that wasn’t what happened. After the group was … Continue reading How to Write a Convincing Story About an Unfamiliar Subject
You've spent weeks perfecting your story. You've fixed every typo, bridged every plot hole, the dialogue sings, and there's not an unnecessary word in sight. So you send it out to some magazines and it's not long before your first rejection letter arrives. And then the next one. And the next one. And the next … Continue reading How to Know When to Give up Submitting a Short Story
You’ve got your whole afternoon blocked off for writing. You’ve just gotten off work, turned off your phone and found a quiet place to spend some quality time with your keyboard. You take a deep breath, open MS Word, and... Two hours later, you don’t know where the time went but it certainly didn’t go … Continue reading 3 Tips for Beating Writer’s Block
Fanboy Expo is a local Con, and if you head to the back rows, you'll see dozens of self-published science fiction authors--and learn how not to sell your books. If you're going to self-publish, you have to know how to sell and market your books. No one else is going to do it for you. … Continue reading How Not to Sell Your Book (Lessons From Fanboy)
It's a balancing act. You can't just keep editing your story forever without sending it in. But if you're overanxious and send it too soon, you might have mistakes that you would've caught with time. Whichever side of the spectrum you fall on (submitting too early or not submitting at all), it's important to know … Continue reading How to Know When to Submit Your Story
Flash fiction can be a great place for new writers to start. It's a lot easier to perfect a one page story than a 1,000 page epic, after all. Given that, it should come as no surprise that we get a lot of flash fiction at Belmont Story Review. What is surprising, however, is just how … Continue reading How I Learned to Write Good (and Bad) Flash Fiction
In their guidelines, the magazine Bards and Sages Quarterly highly discourages submitting first person or present tense stories. My first published story with them was both. The magazine Fabula Argentea lists Anthropomorphism as a hard sell. The first story of mine they published was a suicide note from a training bra. One of the most common pieces of … Continue reading When to Break the Rules When Submitting Short Stories
A close friend of mine has a test she gives to each book she picks up in the store. Instead of reading the blurb on the back to determine if she's interested, she'll read the first sentence. And unless that first sentence sings, she'll put it down. That's how long you have to capture your reader: … Continue reading Your First Sentence is Your Most Important
