Pub Crawl

Pub Crawl, short for Pub(lishing) Crawl, is a blog run by several women in the writing industry.  Someone posts nearly every day on a range of writing-related topics.  You can find Pub Crawl here.

Setting

Whether in a lustrous castle by the sea or dotted across a swathe of fields and mountain chains, a story must take place somewhere.  That "somewhere" is part of the setting.

Whether at the dawn of civilization or the high-tech future, a story must take place at some time.  That time is the other part of the setting.

There are many options for story settings.  Your options are somewhat limited, however, by your genre.  Epic fantasy tends to have a setting that mirrors Medieval Europe.  Science-Fiction almost always takes place in the future.  Literary works have more lee-way, but are usually modern or close to it.

The setting of a story is important as it makes it engrossing for the reader.  It also defines technology in-world and can fuel conflict.  Books with boring settings tend to end up boring, whether the characters and plot are great or not.

Setting is a major element of story-telling.  It shares that distinction with characters and plot.  Those three elements meld together, creating a story in the end.

Miracle

It was a true miracle that I remembered to post.  I was in bed listening to my iPod and happened to select a podcast that was an update and included an old episode within it.  This led me to want to look up one of the people from the old episode.  Without being guided to pick that particular podcast, I can say with fair certainty that I would have forgotten about posting.  Big thanks to "The Man Upstairs".

Fifteen - The Weakener

I'm finally going to post another bit to my serial.  However, there's some bad news.  It's more of a teaser than flash fiction.  Sorry.  Soccer has been ruling my life for the last few weeks.  I promise an epic battle next week.

            Laughter filled the valley.  A dark face erupted from the ground.  The eyes were wholly white.  A smile came almost to their corners.

            “Back at last.”

Pandora

Want a continuous radio of music to listen to during your bouts of writers' block?  Try Pandora.  Pandora takes a song, genre, or artist of your choosing and creates a radio station based upon it.  You can influence later songs by giving songs a thumbs-up or a thumbs-down.  Listening to Pandora is generally a great experience.  Just don't waste all of your writing time on it.