Author: Samantha R. Uhrig
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My Best Advice to Young Writers
Hey, writers! As someone who started writing young herself, I love connecting with other passionate young writers. And I often get asked about my best writing advice. Well, here is my best advice for young writers! Never be afraid of self-publishing. For some writers, self-publishing = evil. Yes, I will admit that it would be…
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The Only Writing Rules You’ll Ever Need
There are a few writing rules that you should know. They aren’t like the typical rules you see in guidebooks, or on the Internet. These rules are simple, basic guidelines that will help you unleash your inner boss writer.
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20 Fun Topics to Discuss in Your Camp NaNoWriMo Cabin
For those of us partaking in Camp NaNo this April, we were just sorted into our “cabins.” Personally, I love the cabins – I don’t often get to converse with my fellow writers, let alone writers from all sorts of backgrounds and countries! It’s absolutely enthralling to listen to their stories and ideas.
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5 Little Ways to Love Your Writing (And Why it’s Important)
Why is loving your writing so important? The way I see it, if you love your writing . . . 2. You’re more likely to finish your stories. 1. It shows, and it makes your writing better because of it. So today, we’re going to look at a few – five, to be exact! -…
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“Special Surprise” REVEAL: The Girl Who Frosts The Cakes
Hi, everyone! Man, I’ve been waiting a long time to reveal my Special Surprise – even before I had posted about it at all, I daydreamed about my reveal. Every day, when I sit down at my laptop, I look over my blog and ask myself: Can I post this now? And today, I finally answered: Yes! In this…
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45+ Hobby Ideas For Your Characters
My favorite aspect to character creation: their everyday interests. A good interest adds a whole new piece to the character, making her more relatable, memorable, and compelling. The following list could work as hobbies, professions, and possibly even a secret passion, for your characters. For more ideas, try doing online searches for hobby ideas. Ready?…
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The Writer’s Guide to Fainting
Hi, writers! Here’s a post that’s a little different than usual, what with it being so full of medical facts: the writer’s guide to fainting (or passing out). Because I couldn’t number the books I’ve read that portray fainting scenes incorrectly, and I’ve seen so few tutorials on how to write them better. We’re going…
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How to Write a Story for Someone – a Step-by-Step Guide to Writing the Perfect Gift
It’s hard to buy gifts for people. Birthdays, Christmas, Valentine’s Day, you name it, I always have difficulty finding a present that is not only straight from the heart, but something they’ll remember and keep. That’s my goal with presents, anyway, and sometimes I cheat on that goal. I’m a victim of buying candles as…
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New to The World of NaNoWriMo? Here’s What You Need to Know
You’ve heard a lot of crazy things about writing in November. So you looked into it – maybe you asked a friend, maybe you Googled it – and discovered the details. Or maybe you haven’t looked into it much at all, but you love writing, and you’re intrigued. So what is this “NaNoWriMo” thing, anyway?…
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100 Writing Prompts That Are Definitely Not Boring
Why do we have writing prompts? Inspiration-gathering. Which is why I’m tired of plain old writing prompts that don’t spark the imagination. So here’s a whopping 100 prompts that are definitely, without a doubt, not boring. Trust me on this one, I did a quality test and removed the boring prompts. I encourage you to add your…
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Things to do when You’re Stuck in a Scene – the importance of keeping yourself and the readers interested
What keeps us coming back to our writing? For me, personally, I will only come back to my writing if I’m interested in the story and my characters; if I lose interest, or don’t know what I’m going to do next, I leave it. Think of it as reading a book: if the start is…
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How to Make a Character’s Death *Heartbreaking*
Asterisks for *emphasis.* I’ll be honest with you – a majority of the people who read my books tell me these same things: “Why did so-and-so have to die?!” “Noooo, how dare you kill off so-and-so!” It’s a pattern. And I’ve started to take notice of it. I wonder to myself, What exactly makes my characters’…
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3 Things that bore the Reader (and how to fix them)
When a reader gets bored, he closes the book. It happened to me just last night, when I was reading The Lightning Thief. That fight between Percy J. and Ares was really, really boring (which I will bring up again later). It’s disappointing from an author as great as Rick Riordan. As a writer, I know it is…
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How to Write a Book – from a published Amazon author
“You can make anything by writing.” – C.S. Lewis Writing a book is hard. It’s the honest truth for any and all writers – writing is hard. It takes weeks, maybe even months to write those 50 pages that the reader will finish in one sitting. Is the effort worth it?…
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Female Characters – what you’re doing wrong
Recently I read a book series with two important female characters; one of which was unnecessary, the other was a waste of great potential, and they both were just pieces in a stupid love triangle. No one likes jealous girls, people. After reading making that realization about those characters, I sat down and typed…
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20 One-Sentence Dialogue Prompts
(It’s been so long since I’ve posted anything! Just to recap, the only things that happened since my post on November 30th are both mine and my brother’s birthdays passing.) Sometimes I feel like the best writing prompts are the simple, one-sentence prompts. I find them most inspiring, and they can go in so many…
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“THE END”
Today started out as any other. I ate pumpkin oatmeal in a Christmas mug, for breakfast, and afterward I dug through my dirty clothes for my NaNoWriMo t-shirt. I usually don’t start writing till the afternoon, but today I started at ten thirty in the morning. And I finished at about three p.m. with an…
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How to write from the point of view of an animal
Writing about people (and the such) is generally the common POV authors work from. And of course they do; it’s easier to relate to a person than a bobcat. But for the younger age group, sometimes they’ll be more likely to pick up a book with an heroic young dog on the cover (I…
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How to edit your novel (because it needs to be AWESOME)
Writing a novel? Oh yeah, I’ve got tons of ideas and characters, and when my novel is famous, I’m going to sign my signature like this. This is going to be GREAT! Editing a novel? Kill me now. There are many things about writing novels that make writers groan (title, synopsis, character names, I…
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How to OWN NaNoWriMo ( like a boss, obviously )
(To those who don’t know, NaNoWriMo stands for National Novel Writing Month, which is every November. Look it up for more details, there should be plenty of results.) I don’t know about you guys, but with November approaching, I’m getting awfully excited for this year’s NaNoWriMo. Here are some tips to totally OWN NaNoWriMo this…
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How I conquer the dreaded writer’s block.
Most posts like this [on other blogs and websites] say things like, “listen to music,” “change your location to write,” “go outside,” etc. etc. While these work fine (especially the first one; it works well for me), I have an even better solution that’s almost guaranteed to work every time. Write. Just writing yourself out…