History That Never Was

Home of Dawn Vogel: Writer, Historian, Geek

Collaborative Storytelling

| March 31, 2025

During the gaming convention I was at recently, I played in a couple of games that involved a lot of collaborative storytelling. It was fun for me to get to stretch some of my writing muscles in a setting where I wasn’t writing down the results, but rather working with other people to shape the […]

Writing Tools: Story Engine Lore Master’s Deck

| March 17, 2025

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. The latest card-based writing tool in my stash is the Story […]

Quick and Dirty Research for Writers

| March 10, 2025

I recently wrote a lot of flash fiction stories for a casual contest. My stories were all over the place in terms of topics, including a medieval Catholic saint, mushrooms, seventh century Korean and Chinese history, and tea leaf reading, and a few people commented on the breadth of topics, trivia, and knowledge. But as […]

WriteHive Online Conference 2024: Fashion in Worldbuilding

| February 24, 2025

Now that the 2024 WriteHive Online Conference panels are available on their YouTube channel, I’m catching up on the ones I missed during the conference itself and sharing some of the things I gleaned from them here! The panel on “Fashion in Worldbuilding” talked about the different ways that clothing can be used not only […]

WriteHive Online Conference 2024: Show and Tell

| February 17, 2025

Now that the 2024 WriteHive Online Conference panels are available on their YouTube channel, I’m catching up on the ones I missed during the conference itself and sharing some of the things I gleaned from them here! I watched the panel titled “Show and Tell: What Works and What Writers Get Wrong,” because even after […]

WriteHive Online Conference 2024: Passive Marketing

| February 10, 2025

Now that the 2024 WriteHive Online Conference panels are available on their YouTube channel, I’m catching up on the ones I missed during the conference itself and sharing some of the things I gleaned from them here! Jessica Salina’s presentation, “Passive Marketing: How Authors Can Leverage SEO,” is a brilliantly useful watch for anyone who […]

WriteHive Online Conference 2024: Rooted in Story

| February 3, 2025

Now that the 2024 WriteHive Online Conference panels are available on their YouTube channel, I’m catching up on the ones I missed during the conference itself and sharing some of the things I gleaned from them here! I watched “Rooted in Story: Cultivating the Natural World in Ink” to get some cool ideas on how […]

New Years’ Resolution to Write a Novel? Check Out An (Un)helpful Guide!

| January 30, 2025

If you’ve given yourself a New Years’ resolution to write a novel, my non-fiction, tongue-in-cheek, book of novel writing advice, An (Un)helpful Guide to Writing a Novel, might be helpful! Most books about writing a novel give you advice about plot and structure and stakes and more. This isn’t most books. Within the pages of An […]

WriteHive Online Conference 2024: Tackling Procrastination and Creating a Routine

| January 13, 2025

Now that the 2024 WriteHive Online Conference panels are available on their YouTube channel, I’m catching up on the ones I missed during the conference itself and sharing some of the things I gleaned from them here! Amusingly enough, I procrastinated quite a bit on watching “Tackling Procrastination and Creating a Routine.” But once I […]

WriteHive Online Conference 2024: Tarot for Writers

| January 6, 2025

Now that the 2024 WriteHive Online Conference panels are available on their YouTube channel, I’m catching up on the ones I missed during the conference itself and sharing some of the things I gleaned from them here! I enjoyed Kris Waldherr’s presentation on “Tarot for Writers,” which was a neat look at the ways in […]