I’ve been having enough fun with the free version of Powtoons that I’m thinking about upgrading. Here’s a video for the flash fiction that I’m 90% happy with. Please like it or share it if you enjoy it.
Want access to a lively community of writers and readers, free writing classes, co-working sessions, special speakers, weekly writing games, random pictures and MORE for as little as $2? Check out Cat’s Patreon campaign.
"(On the writing F&SF workshop) Wanted to crow and say thanks: the first story I wrote after taking your class was my very first sale. Coincidence? nah….thanks so much."
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Before You Start
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Protecting Your Privacy
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At a Minimum
Your Name
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Online Tool: Rescue Time
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Mobile Devices
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Making Websites Mobile-friendly
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Miscellania
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Arguing on the Internet
If You Screw Up
Grouping Up
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Press Releases
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Selling More Books
Creating an Online Presence For Your Group
Teaching Writing Online
On Award Pimpage
Privacy Best Practices
Online Tools: URL Shorteners
Creative Commons Licenses
Online Tools: Wikis
Appendix: Sites Mentioned.
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I’m finishing up converting the workshop I did at Surrey International Writers Conference a month or so ago, Dunking Your Readers in the Details, as an on-demand class. That class was in turn based on an hourlong online writing class I did for Greg Wilson’s Twitch channel a few months ago.
The class has been fun to put together. Over the course of being taught multiple times, it’s evolved to a point where it presents a dozen tools for writing more immersive worlds, and includes several exercises to allow you to test out the different techniques and see what works for you.
Curious about it? Here’s the section on prioritizing the senses.
A common tool of “Golden Age science fiction” “” the late 1930s through the 50s, when science fiction was first coming into its own as a genre “” was to invoke all five senses within the first page of a story.
It turns out there’s some science behind that method, in that writing that uses the senses creates more brain activity, setting off mirror neurons. Mirror neurons are neurons that fire under two circumstances: when you are experiencing an event and secondly when you are watching someone else experience it. Writing that invokes the senses makes mirror neurons fire, which makes your reader feel as though they’re experiencing what you are describing.
But beyond that, three of the five senses are more useful to you and should be focused on. Sight and sound will come naturally, and we’re inured to them from watching television and the movies. What you need to push to invoke are smell, taste, and most importantly: touch.
Why is the last the most important? Because touch is more than a question of smooth or rough, velvet versus pebbled. It includes:
â—¦ Temperature like a chilly breeze, the warmth of a sunbeam
â—¦ Bodily sensations such as pain, nausea, exhaustion, fever, itches
â—¦ Motion moments like falling, flying, and floating
When you use these senses in your writing, you are making the reader feel as though they are in the body of the point of view character and experiencing the story world through them. This is a key technique when writing an immersive world.
Update: the class is now available here!
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(horror, flash fiction) 2. Zombies can turn up anywhere. If your mom dies in her sleep, she’ll become a zombie that doesn’t care whose brain she’s (slowly) eating.
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