How to Use Prologues, Part 11, Prologues and Epilogues

More writing tips on Story Empire!

Story Empire

Image courtesy of Tumisu via Pixabay

Hi SErs! It’s a day of Harmony here at Story Empire 🙂 Today, I’d like to talk about epilogues in relation to prologues. Here’s a link to the previous post on Recap of Tools.

What is an Epilogue?

An epilogue is like a prologue in that it adds to the main narrative. The main difference is that an epilogue comes at the end of the book rather than the beginning. So, where a prologue comes before the main story, an epilogue comes after all the other events have happened. An epilogue can jump way ahead in time or only an hour or a day or two. However, it MUST be linked to the events and characters your reader has become familiar with throughout the main story. As with a prologue, only use an epilogue if the information doesn’t fit within the main…

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Voice of Indie Podcast

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Narrative Choice, Part 1

Quality writing tips!

Story Empire

by Stephen Geez

Every new story project offers me the challenge of finding a narrative style and format that are different than any I’ve previously written. I don’t make choices to be gimmicky, but rather to find what works best, which is usually something I might not have routinely considered. The obvious choices come down to who (singular or plural) is narrating, and which tense (or mix of tenses) is being used. Beyond those, though, narrative offers nearly unlimited possibilities. Is your narrator talking to readers—or another character? Is the narrator speaking of believable events, or might that person be unreliable, speaking opinions rather than facts, or even spinning a yarn from delusion? How much does your narrator know—and is s/he revealing or holding back—or deceiving? Seems the more we consider options, the more choices we need to make.

For this post, I’ll start with the basics in narrative choice—voice…

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Fake Social Media Accounts! Should I Worry?

This one is on Story Empire!

Story Empire

 

Greetings, SE’ers! Happy New Year! Beem Weeks here with you again. Today, I’m discussing fake social media accounts.

Recently, I received notice of a new follower on a certain social media platform. Not unusual, as this account is attached to my podcast and publisher. We gain new followers daily. But this new follower stood out among the others. I know the person. I know she had already been a follower of the account. The photo and bio were legit, but the name had subtle misspellings. A quick screen shot and message to the legit person revealed this was not a new account helmed by her. She reported the fraud to the platform in question.

I’ve seen this sort of deception many times over the years. As authors, we tend to become familiar with those who follow our accounts. They may be fellow authors, publishers, podcasters, bloggers, or readers. We…

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Using Dialect and Vernacular

A wonderful piece on writing dialect!

Story Empire

Hey, SE Readers. Joan with you today. I hope you had a wonderful holiday season, and the new year is off to a good start.

Regional dialect and vernacular are commonplace. Here in the United States alone, we have Appalachia, the deep south, Texas, the Midwest, and the northeast just to name a few. We speak English, but many of our sayings differ.

For instance, in Texas and many parts of the south we use the word “y’all” when referring to a group of people. People on the west coast might use the term “you guys,” and those other parts of the country are known to say “youin’s.” I’ve even heard the term “yous guys.”

Regional dialect and vernacular are what make each area unique, much like accents. I’ve found folks from New Jersey have slightly different accents than those living in the neighboring state of New York. A southern…

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Final Examples of Types of Humor

More tips on humor and writing!

Story Empire

Photo by Nick Fewings on Unsplash

Hi SEers. John is back with you again. Happy New Year to you all.  Last week I  gave you some humor examples from the list of nine types of humor. Today I want to finish the list. If you need to check back on the Types of humor, go HERE. If you want to review the previous post, go HERE. Well, now that I have directed you all over the place, let’s begin.

Topical Humor – Using current events to create humor. Political cartoons are obvious examples, as are Saturday Night Live skits. As to writing, any story of a topical nature can have an infusion of humor. Narration and dialogue both work.

Trying to find topical humor in literature is tough, but if we go to YouTube shorts, there is plenty. Here’s one.

Here is another about old people. He talks about…

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Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

Greetings to one and all. I would like to wish everybody a very Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah, Happy Kwanzaa, and Happy New Year! Here’s to a fruitful 2023! 

MKTG #22 – Wrap-up

Great marketing advice for authors!

Story Empire

Greetings, SE’ers. It’s Jan again. Since July 2021, I have explored a variety of different avenues of book marketing opportunities, and I’ve come to the end of that journey. This is my last Story Empire post for 2022 and my last book marketing post. That’s not to say I won’t pop back in with something new if it comes to my attention, but for now, I’m leaving the subject of marketing behind.

Image courtesy CANVA

After extensive research and exploration of various book marketing avenues, what did I learn?

• Book Marketing is by far the hardest part of an author’s job
• What works for one author or one book may not work for the next
• There is no magic bullet
• You can spend a lot of money on book marketing
• Marketing can be time-consuming and exhausting
• The ROI on most book marketing is not worth the money or effort

So…

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Smorgasbord Christmas Book Fair 2022 – #Shortstories Beem Weeks, #Mystery #Thriller Joy York, #Shortstories Simon Van Der Velde

I am humbly honored to be spotlighted on Smorgasbord!

Smorgasbord Blog Magazine

Welcome to the Smorgasbord Christmas Book Fair with a selection of books from personally recommended authors on my bookshelf I believe will make wonderful gifts for friends, family and for you.

The first author is Beem Weeks. I enjoyed reading his novel Jazz Baby in the summer and can highly recommend. Today I am featuring his short story collection Strange Highway.

About the collection

If you ever find yourself on the Strange Hwy—don’t turn around. Don’t panic. Just. Keep. Going. You never know what you’ll find.
You’ll see magic at the fingertips of an autistic young man,
•A teen girl’s afternoon, lifetime of loss.
•A winged man, an angel? Demon—?
•Mother’s recognition, peace to daughter.
•Danny’s death, stifled secrets.
•Black man’s music, guitar transforms boy.
•Dead brother, open confession.
•First love, supernatural?—family becomes whole!
You can exit the Strange Hwy, and come back any time you want.
See, now…

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Writing the End – Part II

Stellar tips on writing the end of your story!

Story Empire

Greetings Storytellers! Last month I introduced the topic of endings and how important they are to creating a satisfying and lasting impression of our books: Writing the End, Part One. Now, it’s time to browse through some common types of endings.

Not all types of endings are mutually exclusive, and the goal isn’t to pick one kind of ending and force your story to conform. Instead, it’s to focus on what you want to emphasize as the most important element of your book, what final experience you want to give your readers as they close the last page. It’s how you fulfill the promise you made at the story’s beginning.

There are 8 common ways to end a story.

• Resolved Ending
• Unresolved Ending
• Ambiguous Ending
• Surprise Ending
• Tie-back Ending
• Altered World Ending
• Altered Character Ending
• The Epilog

Today I’m going to chat about the first four.

1.    Resolved Ending

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