History That Never Was

Home of Dawn Vogel: Writer, Historian, Geek

Advice for Speculative Fiction Writing

| April 8, 2024

If you’re looking for some helpful advice for speculative fiction writers, check out this article with some great suggestions about how you might refresh your speculative fiction writing! I think the advice presented here is useful for all levels of speculative fiction writers, whether you’re just getting started or whether you want to try something […]

Poetry Form: Tanka

| April 1, 2024

I’ve been back in the swing of working on some form poetry, so I’ve got some new-to-me forms to talk about! This week’s form is the tanka, which is a variation on a haiku that is five lines instead of three and 31 syllables instead of 17. In general, it still follows the structure of […]

Coping with Burnout

| March 25, 2024

Every so often, burnout rears its ugly head. For me, it usually happens most often when I’m trying to cram too much into too small of a space of time. But it can also happen when my day job gets particularly hectic, leaving me feeling drained and unable to do anything more when I get […]

Have You Left a Book Review Lately?

| March 18, 2024

If you’re a reader (and if you’re not, I’m a little confused about what brought you to my website) or writer, have you left a book review for someone lately? Even if your review is short and sweet (“Loved it!” and “Great read!” are both good options), it helps writers out immensely when people review […]

Ideas for Genre Mashups

| March 11, 2024

On Friday, the writing prompts were related to genre mashups, and today, I’m sharing an article from one of the Story Engine folks on how you can use the Story Engine cards to create mashed-up genre story plots. The Story Engine cards are among my favorite card-based writing tools, so it’s neat to see these […]

Advice on Writing Fairy Tale Retellings

| March 4, 2024

I’ve been noodling on a fairy tale retelling recently, and I came across this article that gives some good advice on writing such a thing! The one I’m working on may add some additional levels of complexity to this advice, but it’s definitely a good starting point!  

Writing Tool: Freeform (iOS)

| February 26, 2024

Not too long ago, an author friend of mine mentioned using Freeform, an iOS app, to organize his thoughts on a story he was working on. He added photos of his cast, notes on each of them, and a day by day outline for each of the major characters, along with what happened for each […]

Bogging Down in Revisions

| February 19, 2024

I’m currently in the midst of revising a novella, and I’ve definitely hit the mucky middle. I didn’t feel like it slowed down substantially when I was writing this part of the book, but now I’m second-guessing everything I’ve written, all the parts I’ve revised, and all the parts I haven’t revised. It’s sort of […]

Writing What You Love

| February 12, 2024

A lot of writing advice tells authors to write what you know, but I think it’s more important to write what you love. Chuck Wendig agrees. In his blog post, he talks about writing marketable stuff when the market is fickle, and so much more. So why not just write what you love?  

Revitalizing a Story from the Discard Folder

| February 5, 2024

Sometimes, I go digging in my old story discard folder and strike gold! Over the years I’ve been writing, I’ve sometimes set fragmentary stories aside. In many cases, I know what I want to do with the stories, but I just haven’t had time to finish them. For others, I’m still struggling with what I want […]