History That Never Was

Home of Dawn Vogel: Writer, Historian, Geek

A Question from the Audience: Starting Stories

| September 9, 2019

I recently had a question from one of my fellow author friends, which I was given with an eye toward blogging about the topic. So here we go. First ever question from the audience! Do you always start writing in the same place? Scene? Character? Descriptions? Dialogue? Start-to-finish? End first and write backward? Write the […]

Beginnings are Hard

| May 7, 2018

Time and again, I return to the same problem: starting something new is hard. I often have story ideas in my head, or in hastily scribbled notes, where I know exactly what needs to happen. But I don’t always know how that story starts, or where it starts. I worked on a story recently where […]

The Daunting First Page

| January 8, 2018

Soon, I start working on my next novel. It’s always an adventure to start in on a new book, even though I’ve got my outline firmly in hand. But even though my rational brain tells me that whatever I put on paper first doesn’t have to be a super clever opening line, my emotional brain […]