Tag Archives: Guest Post

A Newbie’s Guide to World Building (Guest Post)

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World Building

The primary purpose of world building is to ground the story in a consistent setting in which your characters live and move. What I’ve tried to do is give some tips and pointers in how to go about the process of world building, starting with making decisions, basics for the process, inspiration, and what not to do. Examples are given from well-followed continuities to make things easier to understand.

Make Decisions

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Choose a type of world. Make this decision early and confidently, and don’t do a lot of other work until you have. Decide how far into that genre it will be. For instance, if you’re in a magical world, decide if it is Earth Magical (Harry Potter), medieval magical (Tamora Pierce’s Tortall and Emelyn books), or some other type of magical setting. You can combine genres as well, such as the TV show Firefly which is a space western.

Decide how you will make world building decisions. There are different methods and combinations for this. Some decisions are directed by the story’s plot or characters, while others will be made based on a particular species you’re working with. If you’re writing steampunk, it’s usually a good idea to set up a historically-based society, while a story about a starship will automatically put you in space. You can certainly change things about these settings, as Tortall and Emelyn are medieval based stories whose characters often challenge the patriarchal view one often finds there.

Do not dither back and forth when making decisions. Make a choice based on what you know and works for the story. While in some cases you’ll make changes later, most of the time you won’t. You don’t want to be changing every mention of something in an entire novel because you didn’t decide. Continue reading →

Coffee Culture on Pinterest (Guest Post)

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Let’s start with the basics. What is Pinterest (the short version)? Pinterest is an online platform for creating vision boards or interest boards. Some people call it a visual bookmarking site. You start by creating a profile on the site. Once the profile is in place, you can create “vision” boards on any subject. Now that you have a board in place, you can start “pinning”! A “pin” can be created from a photo, a graphic or anything visual.

You can pin something to a board by uploading a file from your PC or smart phone. You can also pin something interesting you see on a blog or website to one of your boards. For example, let’s say I’m cruising around the internet and find some great photos of Pluto on the NASA website. I can pin the photos to my Pinterest board called “Planets On The Go” or “Dwarf Planets in Space”. I can call the board anything I want.

The thing that gives Pinterest its social appeal is “re-pinning”. You can follow people on Pinterest and see what they’re pinning to their boards. If you see something interesting, you can “re-pin” it to one of your boards. Of course, others can follow what you pin and re-pin to one of their boards as well.

With anything social, as more join in, cultures and sub-cultures start to form. Pinterest is no different. Pinterest tracks patterns among users as they create boards and add pins to those boards. Before long Pinterest will create categories and sub-categories for a subject as more people pin about it. Pinterest has 70 million users worldwide so new  categories and sub-categories are created daily.

Continue reading →

The Scary Things about Cat Editors (Guest Post)

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by Molly Hunt

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Editor Cat- There are days… by Rogena Mitchell-Jones Manuscript Service

Tinkerbelle is looking me in the eyes from her bed behind my monitor where she does her best editing. She knows what I’m thinking. She knows I don’t have a clue what I’m about to write, and she knows I’m going to bull my way through in spite of that. Cats know these things, but…

How do they know?

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Tinkerbelle, Prime Editor

I turn slightly and see Tink is not alone; Little is also watching. She wants to see what I do next. She looks exceedingly smug, knowing that if she doesn’t like it, she will drift her feathery fur across my touch screen and make it disappear.

“No, Little, no! It can’t be that bad. Can it?”

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Little, Hands-on Editor

Continue reading →

It’s a Novel Idea (Guest Post)

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by Jade Sutton

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One hot summer evening, a couple walked up to a splash pad in the park and decided to go skinny dipping so they could cool off.  After the couple had removed most of their clothing, they began running and jumping in the cool, crisp water.  Suddenly, the jets turned off and on the ground was a very well-dressed woman laying face down with stab wounds in her back.

Next on the scene is New York’s finest homicide detective, Kate Beckett (played by Stana Katic) and the famous mystery novelist Richard Castle (played by Nathan Fillion). The two work together to solve crimes in New York City. After Castle killed off his main character, Derek Storm from his previous series, Castle needed a new muse to inspire him.  Kate Beckett was the inspiration for his new character, Nikki Heat. Sometimes Rick Castle and Kate Beckett are stumped by a case and Castle asks his Poker buddies, James Patterson and Michael Connelly how they would write Castle’s hypothetical story/case. These cases later become the bases for his Nikki Heat series.

The fictional character Richard Castle has written a series of Nikki Heat books.  Just like the TV show the book jacket reads, “Richard Castle lives in New York with his mother and daughter.” The real author of these books is unknown. If you would like to read more, you can find Richard Castle’s books in your local library (I’ve also linked to each book via the image below).

The Nikki Heat series is as follows:

                         

You can watch Castle on ABC Monday nights 10pm EST.  Also, you can purchase past seasons of Castle on Amazon.

Jade Sutton lives in eastern North Carolina with her husband and 2 beautiful feline fur babies. She is an educator by day and an artist by night and her current interests are art journaling, mixed media, scrapbooking, making cards and photography. If you would like to see more of her art, Jade Sutton’s blog is jadesuttonart.com

 

Want to write a post and have it featured on The Caffeinated Writer? Submit your pitch here!

 

Starbucks: My Second Office (Guest Post)

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by Brent Jackson

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“When that first sip of coffee … touches your soul.” I see memes with this saying all over the internet. I have a few pinned to my Coffee Shop Stuff board on Pinterest. I love coffee! I love coffee so much, all I have to do is walk two blocks to my local Starbucks. The moment I open the door, I’m at my second office.

Think about it. A coffee shop is a special place. The smell of fresh coffee greets me the moment I open the door. The sounds of busy coffee machines and steaming milk fill my ears. The look of bar tops, tables and comfortable chairs inviting me to make myself at home. All that’s left is to order my coffee.

Continue reading →

Open Submission — Pitch Your Guest Post Ideas

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I haven’t been around the blogging world long, but I’ve been around long enough to see that guest posts are quite a thing.

From what I’ve noticed and what I’ve read about them, they have a few pros and cons:

Pros:

  • Fresh content
  • Different voices
  • Less posts for me to make
  • More exposure when the poster shares their post on my blog to their followers

Cons:

  • The time you spend not writing posts, you spend editing the guest’s post.
  • Sometimes you have to be mean and reject peoples’ posts.

Well, at this point in time, I have a hard time coming up with cons.

I, for one, think (as of right now of course) that allowing guest posts is a great idea. We’re a community here, and I want to be able to let other people share their posts on my blog, and vice versa. That way we can find new bloggers to follow, with a beaming recommendation from someone we already do follow.

I think there are a lot of opportunities to be had by allowing for people to guest post.

Everyone is always looking for a way to get their name out there. My blog is not huge by any means, but I’m hoping it works its way up. Someone with a smaller blog can guest post here and get more exposure for themselves. On the flip side, someone with a huge following can guest post here and I can get more exposure when they share the link with their followers.

Look, I think we all get the picture here –

I am opening submissions for guest posts.

Guest posters.jpg Continue reading →