dawn.vogel | 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 […]
dawn.vogel | July 22, 2024
Last week, I talked about my revision process for very short pieces (drabbles, microfiction, and flash). This week, I’m talking about my revision process for short stories. First, I always try to finish the first draft before tinkering with it. The struggle is real, because I’m an editor, so I’m always tempted to start revising […]
dawn.vogel | July 15, 2024
I had the idea to write a post about my revision process, but it occurred to me that it’s different depending on the length of the piece I’m revising. When I’m writing novella or novel length pieces, my revision wall is my go to method. But the revision wall is way too much when I’m […]
dawn.vogel | June 3, 2024
Some authors write long pieces, and when they get to the end, they realize they could benefit from learning to write more concisely. Other authors (like me) write very sparsely to begin with (and wind up having to flesh some things out during revisions). If you’re more in the former camp than the latter, here […]
dawn.vogel | 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 […]
dawn.vogel | 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 […]
dawn.vogel | January 3, 2022
As I’ve written more and more stories, I’ve reached a point now where I can draft a story and often see that it’s a flawed story. Sometimes, I’ve grabbed onto something too big for the scope of a short story. Other times, it’s that not much is happening, in spite of having a lot of […]
dawn.vogel | November 6, 2020
If you’re stuck in a rut, sometimes playing a game can help get your writing flowing again. Here are 20 games to play with writing! This list is a lot of fun because it’s a mix of poetry, writing from scratch, and revision games. So you can pick and choose which ones work best for […]
dawn.vogel | February 24, 2020
I’ve been working through revisions on a novel since the beginning of 2020, and I’m finally reaching the end of those. But I wanted to show off the tool that I’ve been using to help with those revisions–my Revision Wall. Some people use post-it notes to do something similar, but I needed a) more space […]
dawn.vogel | November 18, 2019
I’m back today with another question from the audience! Do you have any advice on trying to “de-trunk” and resuscitate a story you really liked? Like, how do I know if it’s time? How do I find the good bits without holding onto the ones that just aren’t working? So remember how I talked about […]
