Archive for the ‘Writing Craft’

A Writer’s Journey – Part 3: My First Novel

August 15, 2011 By: Christopher D. Eldridge Category: Writing Craft

During the summer of 8th grade I was inspired to create my first novel. I was on vacation in California, spending time with my dad, step-mom, and two of my younger sisters. We were heading up toward Round Mountain through the beautiful California wilderness, when I spotted a bird, either an eagle or hawk, and an idea popped into my head. I loved nature and adventuring, and I wondered what it would be like to spend my life traveling the world in search of things–relics, treasures, mythical beasts, etc. (more…)

A Writer’s Journey – Part 2: My First Book

July 25, 2011 By: Christopher D. Eldridge Category: Plot & Stucture, Writing Craft

I don’t know just how many stories I had written by sixth grade, but I know for certain that this is when I created my first book, bound and with my own color illustrations. It was our major assignment for the semester in English. I’m sure I was thrilled about making my own book, though I can’t say for certain. I do remember it being a labor of love, something I was truly proud of after finishing. Unfortunately, I can’t remember who my teacher was.
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A Writer’s Journey – Part 1: My Beginning

July 18, 2011 By: Christopher D. Eldridge Category: Writing Craft

I was born to be a writer. I know that sounds trite or even ridiculous to some, but writing is in my DNA. Let me tell you why.
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Flash Fiction Month – 3

April 18, 2011 By: Christopher D. Eldridge Category: Flash Fiction, Writing Craft

For today’s flash fiction piece, here’s something a little lighter than what I had the previous two weeks. The theme for this story is a run-on sentence, so take a deep breath before you dive in. Enjoy.

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Flash Fiction Month – 2

April 11, 2011 By: Christopher D. Eldridge Category: Flash Fiction, Writing Craft

To continue this month’s theme of flash fiction, here is another short story under five hundred words.

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Flash Fiction Month – 1

April 04, 2011 By: Christopher D. Eldridge Category: Flash Fiction, Writing Craft

April is spring time. A time of new beginnings. A time when many animals give birth, trees bud, and flowers bloom. For me, as a writer, I would consider college to be my spring and more specifically, my April. This is the time when I first found my voice.

So in honor of the first real month of spring, I am going to have an entire month dedicated to flash fiction. This is because my favorite creative writing professor in college challenged me, a long-winded epic fantasy writer, to create short stories of around five hundred words or less. I came to enjoy these weekly exercises,  and writing such succinct literary pieces, helped me to find my voice as a writer.

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The Revision Process – Part 2

March 21, 2011 By: Christopher D. Eldridge Category: Writing Craft

When writing a novel, the revision process never ends, unless your manuscript gets published, or you throw it in the trash and never look at it again. And nothing tends to cause a writer more fits than the opening of a novel. Here is one of the earliest versions of my first book that I wrote years ago.  I cringe just reading it.

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The Revision Process – Part 1

March 14, 2011 By: Christopher D. Eldridge Category: Writing Craft

If you’ve never written a novel before, you may not grasp what it means to revise a manuscript, especially one over a thousand pages long. Some people think revision is going back through, checking typos and fixing misplaced punctuation. That’s proofreading or copy editing. A more appropriate term for revision might be rewriting. You see, writing the first draft of a novel is relatively easy. Once that first draft is finished the work has really just begun. Now I can’t speak for authors whose craft has been shaped and polished over a career of writing and publishing several books or more as their revision process might be quite different.

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World-Building (Map-Making Part 2)

March 07, 2011 By: Christopher D. Eldridge Category: Description & Setting, Technology, World-Building, Writing Craft

The Various Stages of My World – CLICK TO ENLARGE IMAGES

Now that you’ve decided to create a map for you stories and your world, let me give you some insight in how to go about doing this. While I plan to cover a number of topics on world-building and how it relates to map-making in my series, let me first point you to a vast repertoire of knowledge.

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World-Building (Map-Making Part 1)

February 28, 2011 By: Christopher D. Eldridge Category: Description & Setting, Technology, World-Building, Writing Craft

The Various Stages of My World – CLICK TO ENLARGE IMAGES

Until you put your world on paper or on file, it is no more than a figment of your imagination, no matter how well-realized that figment may be. Creating a map of your world is one of the first steps you should take in world-building. In fact, I believe it is a must. Not only then does your world become tangible, and perhaps something you can show off to others, but it also becomes part of a chain reaction in which your map and story feed off of one another.

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World-Building (Astronomical Processes)

February 21, 2011 By: Christopher D. Eldridge Category: World-Building, Writing Craft

My World From Space

Today I’m going to start a series of posts on world-building. They will by no means be exhaustive, and while some of the material may be advanced and never actually be seen on the page, that is to say in the story itself, the purpose is to develop the most fully realized world possible. After all, the vast majority of world-building is never spoken of in a novel, but exists in the mind of the creator.

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