Benjamin Clayborne – Mythic Scribes Test Site

The Magnificent(ly Flawed) Seven – Classic Characters Whose Flaws Make Them Great

Meet Mr. Perfect:

Polite. Well-groomed. Muscular. Handsome. Irresistible to women. Deadly with any weapon you can name. Cool under fire. Immune to pain and to blows that would cripple lesser men. Knows every city and every powerful ruler from here to the far kingdoms. His enemies quail at the very mention of his name. Even when he’s ambushed, Mr. Perfect easily thwarts his opponents.

Mr. Perfect is a boring turd and you should never, ever write a story about him.

The essence of storytelling is conflict. Characters who never face any serious conflict are dull, because the reader never worries that anything bad is going to happen.

Stop Writing That Epic! Why New Writers Should Start Small

by Benjamin Clayborne

A new graduate from the Mechanical Engineering department at Miskatonic University wants to get his career going. So he has to decide what he’s going to design first.

He decides to build an aircraft carrier.

Never mind that this is one of the most elaborate, complex pieces of machinery conceivable—the graduate has decided that he’s capable of designing and building something immensely huge and complex, just like the guys who have been doing it for thirty years.

This sounds insane, but it’s exactly what a huge number of novice writers do when starting out their careers. Instead of starting with something manageable—Ray Bradbury famously advised writing short stories for several years before even attempting a novel—new writers often decide that they’re capable of producing a twelve-volume epic saga with hundreds of characters.

Assessing Your Writing – How Do You Know When It’s Good?

by Benjamin Clayborne

As writers, we ask ourselves this question at one time or another: How can I tell if my work is good?

This is the wrong question. The right question is, “How can I tell if my work is good enough to accomplish my goal?” And that, of course, depends on what your goal is.

If your goal is to sell a novel to a Big Six publisher, you’re going to have a very different standard than if your goal is simply to entertain a small audience on the Internet, or even if your goal is simply to finish NaNoWriMo.

If you’re writing a novel with the goal of finding an established publisher, then the novel only has to be able to impress at least one editor enough that she is willing to give you a contract.

So how can you tell if it’s good enough for that to happen?

Knowing What You Want

by Benjamin Clayborne

Question Mark | Image via Wikipedia — Do you know what you want?

It’s hard to know how to get started as a writer. Should you write short stories or a novel? Should you stick with one genre, or try several? Should you get an agent and submit to traditional publishers, or try the self-publishing route?

The answers to those questions depend entirely on what you want. A full-time career as a writer? Financial stability? (That’s a tough one to achieve by writing!) Fame and respect? To simply be able to say that you finished a novel-length story?

Some people say “I want to be a writer!” without really figuring out what that means. Other folks just want to be able to say “I’m a writer” at cocktail parties and high school reunions. They might not even need any publication credits; simply having tried makes them feel like a writer.