Madeline Turnipseed - Author

Hello friends! Today one of the students in my  class  asked a question I have heard nearly every writer I know ask.  How do you come up with character names? For starters, it depends on the world of your story.  If your story takes place in this reality, most of your work is done already.  Think about the era in which your story takes place, the approximate age of your character, and then do some math to figure out the year of their birth.  Then, plug that year into a search engine along with the phrase "popular names" (you may have to add some qualifiers depending on if your characters are from Mumbai, Memphis, or otherwise).  Then you can choose from, say, twenty names, as opposed to trying to think of one off the top of your head.  Granted, you kind of have to trust the internet, and the farther back you are looking, the more you will need to broaden your search (so, instead of 1873, search 1870's or 1800's), but that's better than nothing...

Today is Valentine's Day.  If you only let the people you care about know that you care about them on holidays, please consider what exactly it is that makes your relationship meaningful, whatever the nature of your relationship.  And go buy chocolate on sale tomorrow, regardless. :) At the beginning of the month, the podcast Writing Excuses  released this cast , talking about using personal life experiences in writing.  This is an extension of the "write what you know" idea, applied in niche form. I would like to expand that idea even further to a concept of knowledge by association. AlexPlatonov I'll give you a few examples from my own life.  My husband is a Network Administrator/guitarist/footballer (the non-American kind)/body builder/gamer/budding bladesmith.  My best friend and her soon to be husband are aerospace engineers.  My mother has taught public school longer than I've been alive, as well as being THE hostess with the mostest....

The title is somewhat of a metaphor, since so few people now write anything with pens that will be read by anyone but themselves.  I believe in your powers of extrapolation. If you watched the Superbowl on Sunday, or at least the commercials, you probably saw the following ad: And if you have a social media account, you may have seen some of the responses to that video.  If not, you can take your pick of media coverage about the responses from  Fox , ABC ,  CNN , NPR , Huffington Post , or you can just read the comments on the video itself here .  Or use your favorite search engine.  Or talk to people at work.  The point is, you've probably heard or read someone talking about it by now.   Interestingly enough,  the United States has no official language .   Then yesterday, a truck in front of me had two bumper stickers, the tamer one reading "Islam Sucks," the other reading, "Kill a Muslim for Jesus."  Besides the obvi...

I was feeling a bit discouraged this week.  I had been reading several posted works on  Scribophile  (I swear I'll stop plugging it one of these weeks) and was marveling at the skill and depth I had seen in the stories.  When I had written enough critiques to earn the points to post my own work, I posted the first chapter of my Nombie novel (I talked about some of my feedback I received last week ).  I received some great feedback, some from others that I had critiqued, but I had to keep reading to get more points to continue posting chapters.  The more posts I read, the more I felt like the quality of my writing was dismally juvenile. Granted, I wrote the majority of my Nombie novel in November of 2012, nearly a year and a half ago.  I tried to make myself feel better by thinking about how far my skill had progressed in that time.  But there was a small voice in the back of my head that asked, "Have you really gotten better?  How do you kn...

Today is Friday, there must be a post! Last week I received some really good feedback from my chapter posted on  Scribophile .  A sum total of 3,588 words as in-text critique, plus copious notes!  So I decided to pare down what I got to the basics, to find the common denominator, and make the best use of what I received. The first is the department that was harped on the most:  line editing.  I did edit the chapter in question before posting it, but the edits I received were very detailed, and almost all of them made the passage sound better, so that was very helpful.  Here is an example of a sentence every reader  wanted me to change.  After reading the first two critiques it was almost funny waiting to see what the next few had to say about it! The bathroom mirror was greasily streaked over the sink. The options I was provided with for replacement read: The bathroom mirror over the sink was greasily streaked. The bathroom mirror was s...

Hello friends! This post is kind of an update on where I am, but I will manage to wedge some encouragement and inspiration in, never fear. Last week my blog topped 1000 views total!  This really is inaccurate because many of these views are from bots spamming my blogsite to see if it gets enough traffic to take down or to latch on to my readers, so be sure you are clearing your cookies and using security software.  But I will take my milestone any way I come by it :) Yesterday was my birthday, and I celebrated turning a quarter of a century by doing as little as possible.  One of the presents I received from my husband is an online writing course from Gotham Writers' Workshop .  I would gush about how awesome they are, but you have the internet and I gave you the link, I believe in your ability to connect the dots.  Needless to say, I am ecstatic! A couple weeks ago, my partner at work asked me what I thought made a good author.  He was thinking it...

Good morning friends! Writing has been in existence long before paper and ink, and now that those tools are less productive than others available, will be around long after they fade into obscurity.  Today I'm talking about the software I use. When I started seriously writing, I used Scrivener .  I was starting NaNoWriMo , and they had a free version to use during the month of November, so I thought, "Why not?"  And I am so glad that I downloaded it.   Scrivener is a software that allows you to word process in outline form. You can create an outline before starting or add chapters as you go, leave the outline open in the side bar while you create your body of text, make notes in a separate column, have two different panes of text open at once, create versions of your story, and store your research all in one place.  Once you are done with your writing you can compile it into a manuscript in nearly any format you can imagine.  As a new writer, and ha...