2024

KotSQ: Third Revision #11

Halfway through this revision pass! Rejoice and/or weep per your personal “mid level of water in a glass” setting. Roughed in the Hero POV scene that replaces the one from a purged side quest. Managed to pull in his phobia, so it’s not quite completely disjointed. It’s in bad shape, but it serves its functional […]

KotSQ: Third Revision #10

Revision resumes with arrival at Big City 1. The story has been sparsely populated up to this point. There’s a shift of dynamic between having the run of the environment and having to work around people who have their own work to do and don’t give a damn about your problems, thank you very much,

KotSQ: Third Revision #9

Revision resumes with a potential turn-back point, which Heroine basically ignored in her mechanical trudge toward the next plot point. I had her slow down to acknowledge both certain death ahead and equally certain but postponed death if she turns back, then tapped both her conscience and a grudge as motivation to justify moving forward.

Site Refresh

Not sure if anyone other than myself and bots experienced the site being down for long stretches over the past week, but it should be reasonably stable now. Functionality There were multiple issues. The first pertained to the CDN (content delivery network, which in my case mostly involves caching). I used to get a bandwidth

Expanded Library Availability

Unexpected news in my inbox this morning: Hoopla’s “long processing time” (in excess of 2 years for some books) has at long last come to an end. Of relevance to those who know me here, all my Ren Benton contemporary romances are now available through libraries that use Hoopla as their digital media service. UPDATE

Chapter Breaks

A student asked, “How do you know where to put a chapter break?” Short answer: vibes. Grouping and separating ideas is a large part of writing. Sentences, paragraphs, scenes, chapters, parts I and II of a book, books in a series—all are choices about what belongs together. Andri did this, and Banti did that. Here,

Free Book Bonanza

Today (June 20, 2024) only, there are two book events to aid you on your quest to accumulate the most massive TBR. Romance Bookworms is hosting their regularly scheduled Stuff Your Ereader day. As you may have guessed from the site name, the offerings there are romance or romance-adjacent. If you’ve partaken in the past,

Lemme Show You What Telling Means

One of today’s writer hashtag games involves “Show, Don’t Tell.” Since I have seen approximately zero participants demonstrate an understanding of the concept and my blood pressure is skyrocketing as a result, here’s a quick tutorial. What Telling Is NOT Dialogue, character thoughts, and narration are not what is meant by “telling.” Conveying any form

KotSQ: Third Revision #8

This week on Revision Island, we get back to deeper work than changing or rearranging a smattering of words. The need was obvious, so maybe (fingers crossed) the tweak-only portions really were mostly fine. Heroine has never trusted Hero because he lies like a rug on the floor, but—as noted in the text—hers is a

KotSQ: Third Revision #7

This week on It’s Always Sweltering in Revision, we begin with a scene that received only nitpicks. That felt too easy and may need more substantial changes, but I can’t fix a problem I can’t identify. I’m due to send myself an updated draft and read the latest batch of scenes for speech therapy, so

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