Ingredients

The key to any good recipe is adding the right things to the mix.

Read & Write Often

Think of reading and writing as your mental workout. If you're looking to run a marathon, you're not going to be very successful without training for it. Writing a book is no different. Stuck in your story? Write a little one shot of something else! Come up with another idea for fun; curl up with a good book that might light your creative spark again.

Know Your Characters

Though this may not seem like an important element of writing, we could argue that this is the most important. Why should I need to know what my character's favorite color is if that never comes up in narrative? Because having a deep understanding as to who your characters are makes all the difference. We had been working on our series for five years when we started writing our first book, and we never stumbled on how any of our characters would speak, be, the things they would own, the habits they would have. We know them inside and out and because of that, it'll probably feel like you do too.

Immerse Yourself In Your World

In the same vein as knowing your characters, knowing your world is just as important. When reading a fantasy novel, I'll bet you find it so frustrating when you can't visualize the world, because there just isn't enough description about it. Sure, maybe that forest is only mentioned a handful of times, but if you don't care about what it looks like, you'll describe it differently every time. How can you expect your readers to be able to walk through your world if you can't?

Baked to Imperfection

Rough drafts are aptly named. They should be rough and messy and require major clean up once your masterpiece is in the oven.

Throw it in the oven & then handle the dishes

Baking leaves your kitchen smelling delicious...and dusted with flour, but the mess is part of the process. If you start tidying up before you've finished putting all your ingredients together, there's still going to be more mess, and you might even miss a pinch of something extra that gives your dish that magick touch.

Rough drafts aren't for reading. It can look however it needs to for you to get your ideas out of your head and on to the page.

Bullet points, dialogue with no tags (e.i. Character: “blah blah blah”), puzzle pieces you’ll put together later
if you need to move on from something, move on! leave a comment/note for yourself to come back to it
don’t get too hung up on names for places/people/things. we like to use the marker ‘fk[thing]’ as its easily searchable because no words have the letters ‘fk’ in them
- i.e. “they went to fkbar for drinks after the show”