History That Never Was

Home of Dawn Vogel: Writer, Historian, Geek

Tips and Tricks for Horror Fiction

| October 18, 2021

There’s a lot of great advice out in the world on writing horror fiction, including this piece from Writer’s Online. In addition to having some wonderful tips for overall horror fiction writing, they also present a short horror writing exercise to get you started on a story or other horror fiction piece! They recommend mining […]

Writing Tools: Reckless Deck Apprentice Pack

| October 11, 2021

I’ve accumulated a large collection of card-based writing tools, each of which is useful to different parts of my writing process. So I’ve decided to do a series of posts about the various decks I own and how I use them in my writing. I’ve talked previously about the core Reckless Deck and Reckless Deck Worlds, […]

Horror Writing Tips from Chuck Wendig

| October 4, 2021

Some topics are a little outside of my wheelhouse when it comes to writing advice. For example, in spite of my love of many spooky things, I’m not great at writing horror. I can write some creepy flash fiction occasionally, using the idea that leaving things to the reader’s imagination is a great way to […]

Poetry Form: Erasure

| September 27, 2021

Erasure poetry is one of the formats that I’ve never quite been able to get to work well, but it’s still a fascinating form. It’s sometimes called blackout poetry, in that you black out the words that you’re not using, like in a redacted report. Typically, when the poetry includes the black boxes, it’s a […]

Writing When Your Day Job is Writing Too

| September 20, 2021

Some fiction authors find themselves drawn to day jobs that also take advantage of their writing skills. But then, you can end up in a position where both your day job and your hobby (or secondary job) involve putting words on paper, which can wind up limiting your creativity in one or both venues. On […]

Writing Tools: Story Engine

| September 13, 2021

I’ve accumulated a large collection of card-based writing tools, each of which is useful to different parts of my writing process. So I’ve decided to do a series of posts about the various decks I own and how I use them in my writing. Story Engine is an amazing deck-based plot generator. It lets you […]

When Planning Goes Awry

| September 6, 2021

I am very much a planner. I have spreadsheets and planner books and to-do lists that keep me on track with my writing. And even though I make adjustments to them all the time, I’m NEVER without a plan. However, I was supposed to undergo surgery on September 1st. In anticipation of that, I cleared […]

Poetry Form: Cento Sonnet

| August 30, 2021

Earlier this month, I talked about sonnets not being quite as difficult as they’d originally seemed to me. And quite some time ago, I explained the cento. But what if you mash them together? Recently, I constructed a cento sonnet, which took lines from existing sonnets and rearranged them together into a cento, which used […]

Dealing with Deadlines

| August 23, 2021

I’m fortunate that I’m at a stage of my writing career when the majority of my deadlines are self-imposed, rather than external. On most of the occasions where I do have an external deadline, it’s one I’ve chosen to try to meet for a call for submissions or other opportunity. But it’s fairly unusual for […]

Writing Tools: Reckless Deck Worlds

| August 16, 2021

I’ve accumulated a large collection of card-based writing tools, each of which is useful to different parts of my writing process. So I’ve decided to do a series of posts about the various decks I own and how I use them in my writing. I’ve talked previously about the core Reckless Deck, but today, I’m […]