Haley Long

Glad it helps!

And yeah, obviously, you don’t want to spoil your story before you publish it. You don’t want to give everything away. Just give little teasers, and of course, talk about your process of creating your novel, because that doesn’t give anything away, but increases interest.

One thing you might want to do is look at what other…[Read more]

@corissa-maiden-of-praise Aww; thanks. 🙂 I appreciate it a lot. You all are the bestisest people on the bestisest place on the internet. That Ecclesiastes passage is a very relevant passage for me during this time!

@daughteroftheking Yeah; I’ll still be around the forum (especially when tagged), but there’s going to be some new people taking on…[Read more]

Hi @spradlin! Ghosts are cool.

@daeus @dekreel Or am I? *waves hands around like a really old-school hollywood movie ghost* Still think this is cool idea, btw.

Here’s our video, @dragon-snapper !

Hope it helps!

5 Reasons You Should Be Talking Up A Storm About Your Novel Before You Even Publish It

Great question, @dragon-snapper

We’ll shoot a video on this, but I can give a quick answer here.

In short, definitely!

First of all, why is your timetable so long? Why not publish this year?

Second, I think it’s a great idea to talk about your novel. In fact, the more the better!

Did Disney keep it a secret when they were planning The Force…[Read more]

@gh24682468999 It doesn’t sound too complicated. I can’t just take this limited information and guarantee it will work, but I think it can. One question: what’s the antagonistic force in this novel?

@dekreel Classic.

@jenwriter17 Yeah. I think it’s the “Worst Allegory Ever” video.

@dekreel These keep getting better and better.

@slylilhuntress Read Brandon Sanderson (crazy amazing fantasy author). Also, Cry The Beloved Country (not fantasy, but very deep and heartfelt. The best Christian novel I’ve ever read). Oh, and read Dreamlander too! It’s amazing.

@Sam-Kowal ha! Well, remind me, and I will. ;P

And YES. Depth is everything. If you can boil your entire world down to a single deep, resonant core story/concept, so much the better for you. Hard to stress enough how important that is. Focus on what you have and make it so magical you don’t have to go look for other things to distract you.

@slylilhuntress  Hello and welcome!!!  Looking forward to seeing you around the forum!  🙂

@Daeus I’ll have you know I was racing to get that typed out before you posted and said all my stuff for me. XD

No, good points though. Maps are important… I have them… in my head… XD Allegorical and historical elements too. Oooh ooh, in fact @Joy, I actually have a cool thing for you. Four ‘pillars’ for you to figure out, that’ll give you…[Read more]

Oh, drat. Kate just stole my secret fire. 🙁

@joy

Fantasy, more than any other genre, is about the past, so the most important thing to nail down is the past history of your story world. Allegorical aspects are good to nail down early too if you want to have them. If you’re going to have magic, nail that down early. Oh, and nail down a map of all the lands included in your story, so you…[Read more]

@Joy excellent question. Someday I want to write a book on worldbuilding, but I’ll try to refrain from dumping the entire tome off on you right here. XD

The first thing, I think, is to realize that worldbuilding is not so much a list of facts about where your story takes place as it is a key— like the key on a map— to discovering why your…[Read more]

@slylilhuntress Ha! I’m reading The Green Ember Series right now too. Andrew Peterson’s great, though I have to sheepishly admit I haven’t read Dekker yet.

@rochellaine  😂 Hahahaha!  Thank you muchly.

@daughteroftheking  *bows*

@kaya-young  Thanks!  I just copy and paste pictures into PowerPoint so that I can have all of the collages in one place.  I usually just find pictures on Pinterest and sometimes just Google.  🙂