Science Fiction Author
I love watching deleted scenes from movies. Those little moments that didn’t make the final cut, but can still give insight in the characters and stories. Just like in movies there are a lot of scenes that get cut when writing book. There’s lots of reasons why a scene gets cut. It might not move… Continue reading Crystal and Flint Deleted Scenes
A few weeks ago I had the chance to sit down and talk to one of my readers. She’s the young teen daughter of a friend of mine from school. She was staying with her grandmother in our old neighborhood and I went over to give her a copy of Family Binds and I was… Continue reading “That’s how it should always be.”
A little over a year ago, we got a new executive director for my department at work. As is always the case when there is new top management, he had grand plans for how to change things. He told us a story about visiting some start up tech company where all the employees were called… Continue reading The power of owning your title
With the release of Family Binds just 16 days away, it’s time to start working on book 3 in The Journey Missions series, Thicker Than Blood. In book 3 Crystal, Desi, Justin, Grady, and Tyler are sent to Earth to speak in a military hearing on the benefits of the officer exchange program to try… Continue reading What to do when your first draft is a huge dumpster fire
Alligator Season: A Faction Story (The Redacted Files) by Tyler Hanson is an edge of your seat novella. It follows Catalina, a monster hunter, as she tries to find and eliminate the monster terrorizing a small village. The monsters in this story are based on real animals though they do have characteristics that kick the… Continue reading Alligator Season by Tyler Hanson Review
Have you ever taken a personality test? They are one of my side interests and I’ve spent countless hours taking them and researching the different personality types. It really helps me to understand how different people take in information and interact with the world. My favorite resource for this is 16 Personalities which follows the… Continue reading Personality Tests and Characterization
The Chaos Circus by R. Dugan tells the story of Tessa, a young woman who desperately wants to live a normal ordinary life, but when her most prized possession is stolen from her Tessa must risk everything to get it back. She follows Nicolai to the Mirror Lands and the home of The Chaos Circus… Continue reading The Chaos Circus by R. Dugan Review
I was preparing to speak at a career day a few months ago and was trying to pull together a visual to use to show just how much work goes into getting a book ready for publication. In digging through all the printed drafts I had, I stumbled upon the very first draft for Crystal… Continue reading How a Story Changes: A Look Back at the First Draft of Crystal and Flint
I do this to myself every year. Every December, while I'm still riding high off of my nano win in November, I make a plan for what I want to accomplish the next year, complete with deadlines. Deadlines that I end up not being able to meet once the new year starts. This year is… Continue reading Oh hey there, remember me
1) How do you plot novels? Do you outline?
I don’t do a lot of planning for the first draft. I’ll have a general idea of what the story is about and maybe a few key moments, but that’s it. I use the first draft to figure out the story. Then for every other draft I make a detailed scene list that go into depth on what happens in the scene, who’s involved, what’s the purpose of the scene and so on. I even go so far as to color code it each scene depending on how much work needs to be done anything from minor changes, to doing a complete rewrite, or even adding in missing scenes. So, by the time I’m done, I end up with this massive multi-tab spreadsheet that really lets me see how the story has evolved and changed with each draft.
2)…
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