The Hero’s Journey: Part One, the Hero & the Journey
The Hero’s Journey, the ur myth of our psyche, infuses, inhabits and informs all of our fiction.
Orphan Black: Evolving Science Fiction with Evolving Biology
Orphan Black is a slick, sophisticated and edgy exploration of human evolution that raises issues about the moral and ethical implications of bio-engineering and genetic tampering
Writing in Sync
The tendency to synchronize pervades the universe, from atoms to animals, and people to planets.
How Are You Telling Your Story?…Part 2: Voice and Narration
Do you understand me better when I talk like ‘this’, or like ‘this’? The voice of the narrator.
Ten Things to Consider When Revising Your Novel
Revising a novel can be “like beating up a nice friend.” Without a little pummeling, all you have is a “nice draft”.
How Art Reveals Truth in Science
A bit of philosophical rumination from Nina today: Both science and art benefit from exchange. By inviting art to participate in its conversation, science provides art with the opportunity to add science to its repertoire. And through its interpretation of scientific ideas and theories, art offers science a new lens through which to see itself.
Virtually Yours by Nina Munteanu
Vincent yanked the V-set off his head and found himself back in his apartment, lying alone and spent on his king-size bed. The cozy cabin with the fireplace had vanished. Katherine was gone. He stared […]
The Art & Science of World Building: The Tools You Need to Make a Believable World
World building requires art AND science. Nina takes us through a primer.
Sensual Writing and Why I Love the Smell of Smoke
Storytelling shares universal truth through metaphor, delivered from the heart. Sensual writing doesn’t just involve making sure to include at least a few senses like sight, sound, smell, taste and touch in your narrative.
The Indie Book Tidal Wave…What Does it Mean for Bookstores, Publishers & Writers?
The publishing industry is changing because we are changing, not the other way around. We are directing that change. We are directing that change every bit as much as we are directing changes in other important elements in our lives.
How Are You Telling Your Story?…Part 1: Viewpoint
Nina gives great writing advice. More importantly, she ‘shows’ rather than ‘tells’. Her latest concerns authorial viewpoints: how do you look at your story?
Five Ways To Improve Your Fiction Writing
Nina gets back to basics with five fundamental elements of writing that every writer should constantly work on improving.
Can Environmental SF Help Save Our Planet?
An introduction to another sub-genre of science fiction
Surfing The Hybrid Wave of Publishing
Publishing is changing in big ways. Nina offers advice on how to hang ten while surfing that wave to success!
Do Your Research
You’d think a writer would know this, but it doesn’t hurt to do your research. Nina ‘splains why.
Parallel Plotting: Mirror, Mirror on the Wall…
The common definition of plot is that it’s whatever happens in the story.” Ahhh, but how are those things that happen put together? Nina explains how interwoven and parallel plotting can enhance a story.
Walking the Tightrope Between Innocent and Cynical
Nina offers help to new writers navigating the shark-filled waters of the publishing biz
What Did You Do Before You Were Famous…?
Reading about famous authors before they were famous may give some aide and comfort to those struggling now.
Finding the Courage To Write
How do you get past the fear of being “exposed”, past the anticipated disappointment of peers, past the terror of success? The answer is passion.
Story and Metaphor in Art Form: How Writing and Painting Whisper or Shout Their Truths
Every artist is a reporter of life and truth; examining the similarities between art and writing.
Beat the Christmas Frenzy and Find Your Focus
Ms. Munteanu offers some personal reflection on the influences and meaning of the holidays – especially for writers and cats.
The Art & Science of World Building: The Tools You Need to Make a Believable World
World building spices real physical and social facts with the author’s imagination to create a civilization, a political structure, a culture and zeitgeist as backdrop and influence to story. Writers define world-building as the process of constructing an imaginary world, usually associated with a fictional universe.
Wake Up Your Muse: How My Cat Taught Me the Art of Being
When I go to my computer to write, I write.
The Evolution of Rejection
Enduring and surviving rejection is part of every writer’s successful career.
Creating Great Characters in Fiction
Characters in fiction fulfill a dramatic function in the story for the reader and are, therefore, more logically laid out. They may, as a result, be more coherent, consistent and clear in their actions and qualities than a person in real life.
To Expose Or Not To Expose…That Is the Question
In fiction, exposition breaks away from the ongoing action of a scene to give information. It can be a paragraph or go on for several pages. Exposition often provides contextual information critical for the reader to buy-in to character-motivation or the ideas promoted in the story.
Choosing Your Tense…and Keeping It
Have you taken the time to consider tense in your story?
Beating Today’s “S” Curve (or Why an Editor is Every Writer’s Best Friend)
The publishing industry is currently experiencing its own version of the “S” curve and the “boom and bust” curve
Make Your Openings Count
“The last man on Earth sat alone in a room. There was a knock on the door…”
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