Not long ago at a convention-esque 40k event I met Steve Parker, one of the writers for Games Workshop's Black Library publishing house. He was a very friendly and encouraging guy. When he gave me some advice on resources for honing my writing skills, I was excited and keen to lose more sleep to this part of my life than I already do.
There were essentially two resources that he recommended to me. The first is the Writer's Digest Elements of Fiction series. Each of those books was written by a different author and focuses on a specfic area of writing fiction. The one I'm reading first is Orson Scott Card's Characters & Viewpoint. I'm about a third of the way through it despite being hopelessly transfixed by A Storm of Swords. So far it seems pretty good, but it's hard to say much about it without finishing it and trying some of Card's methods. The best of it so far has been about knowing the needs of your story and asking a lot of questions. I hope to finish this one around the time I finish my current picture book project. I won't be starting the next picture book until around January and in between I'm going to write some short fiction.
The second resource is an online writers' workshop called Critters. At first I thought to sign up for the time being and then come back to it when I have a story I want critiqued. As it turns out, however, once you register you have to critique a story each week to maintain membership. Oops. I signed up prematurely, but that's really for the best. Procrastination is less than worthless. I've done a month's worth of critiques so far. Each week it is easier to identify and describe what I feel is wrong. Just as importantly, it's easier to say what I think could fix it. I even reread a story I wrote four years ago. I looked at it through fresher, more critical eyes and saw ways to write it how I had originally intended to.
Steve Parker told me that the value in a workshop group is really in being able to identify and communicate what is wrong with stories that don't work for you. After doing this for even a little while I can see how true that is. I am still looking forward to getting some of my work critiqued, however, because I've been reading some of the other critiques that get posted and there is a lot of very good advice given for each story posted. I strongly recommend giving this a try if you are anything as isolated from other writers as I am here in the mountains.
Happy writing and happy critting to you!
