History That Never Was

Home of Dawn Vogel: Writer, Historian, Geek

Fun for Friday: Seasons as Characters

| September 22, 2023

In connection with Monday’s post about seasons in worldbuilding, I’m thinking about seasons as characters. How would you write a character based on spring? Which elements of that season would you emphasize? You could write a character who’s all joy and rebirth and growing things, or you could write a character who’s like torrential downpours […]

Writing Advice from Sherlock Holmes

| December 27, 2021

I like to share interesting author advice that I come across, and this post about 10 Elementary Tips for Writers from Sherlock Holmes struck me as a neat approach. Because it’s not writing advice from Arthur Conan Doyle. It’s what authors can learn by emulating Sherlock Holmes (definitely with less of the opium and breaking […]

Cool Name Matching Tool

| June 16, 2021

When you’re working on coming up with names for characters, particularly characters of a specific ethnic group or age range, you could poke around a bunch of baby naming books or sites to find other names that go along with ones you’ve already picked out. Or you could check out the Name Matchmaker site. This […]

Falling Off the Map

| May 21, 2018

Last week, I talked about getting stuck in the middle of a story. A similar, and yet different problem can be when your story takes on a life of its own, and somehow falls off the edge of your map. Many folks who fall into the “pantsers” camp of writing insist that they just let […]