Have you ever wondered why so much smut is poorly written? The answer is fairly straight forward: a lot of porn is created without the elements that are necessary for good writing. For example, character development. It's hard to write a sex scene where people grow as a person, but character development is an extremely important aspect of writing good literature. So how do we write good sex scenes? Let's answer this by tackling each problem with common smut.  First, let's dis

While a lot of writers don't work with an in depth outline, there are some features that can be helpful to plan out for your scenes before starting. I'll go through the items that I find useful to plan out before getting started on a scene in order to increase my words per minute in my writing sprints. These items include setting importance, set design, lighting design, weather, costume design, character objectives, choreography, and the five senses. First, let's discuss sett

While you can’t work out your creative muscle at the gym or physically see it grow over time, creativity is still a muscle. The more that you use it, the stronger it gets. The stronger it gets, the easier it can be to come up with ideas for your writing, whether that be ideas for scenes or ideas for full length novels. And the best part? There really is no downside to practicing your creativity! You can never be too creative. Today, I want to provide some suggestions on how t

Some websites every writer should know about. One of those websites, without a doubt, is qtCritique. qtCritique is made by the creators of another important website to know about: QueryTracker. (That’s where the QT comes from!) qtCritique is for writers on track to try to be published to receive critiques from other writers on their novel, query letter, synopsis, whatever they need critiqued. The website is set up with a point system. In order to post your work for critique,

Have you ever considered a writing retreat? They are a fantastic investment in your career as a writer—they allow for a specific time and place dedicated to writing, which increases productivity, as well as offering workshops where you can learn from others. However, writing retreats can be far from home and out of your budget. So what’s a good, local, in budget alternative? Building your own. This allows for you to choose the cost and location, so let’s get started! The firs

For a long while now, I have had this science fiction world in my head. I have spent a lot of time developing the universe, but am yet to...

Let me tell you, I have wasted an awful lot of time that I could have spent writing researching how to be more productive when writing....