The Fantasy Writing Show with Jed Herne

There’s one simple change that will make your fantasy prose 10x more immersive and engaging for readers. This change follows something I call The Anchor Principle.

Today, I’ll show you how I applied this principle to edit a scene for one of my writing students. Then I’ll show you the same passage in his final published book, so that you can see how he implemented this simple change to massively improve his prose. Once you learn how to use this Anchor Principle I’m about to show you, it’s going to make your writing so much stronger moving forward.

Want me to personally help you write a great fantasy novel? Join my 12-Week Fantasy Writing Bootcamp.

Read Michael Johnson's book, Children of Ziwei.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Want to write excellent fantasy characters with real depth to them? Then you might want to use a technique I call Dyadic Character Design.

I would consider this to be one of the more advanced character-building techniques I’ve learned over the last fourteen years of writing. It’s helped me a lot with the four novels I’ve published, and it’s also helped many of my writing students as well. In today's episode, I’ll even show you how one of my students used it in the book he just published.

Want me to personally help you write a great fantasy novel? Join my 12-Week Fantasy Writing Bootcamp.

Read The Blood Map by my student, Peter Christensen: https://geni.us/blood-map
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Over the last 14 years of writing, I’ve found that there are really only four causes of writers block. Today, I want to help you understand what these four causes are (and how to fix them) so that you never get stuck when you’re writing a story.

For a bit of context, over the past 14 years I’ve written 9 fantasy books, 4 of which are currently published. I’ve also released an interactive fiction novel, and I’ve also published a nonfiction book, Plotting Your Fantasy Novel, which was a #1 Amazon Best Seller during launch week.

So while I’m certainly not the most prolific writer in the world, I think I’ve generally done a good job of avoiding writers’ block, and I want to share that experience with you today.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Have you ever struggled to find the right names for your fantasy characters? Maybe you feel like - until you find that perfect name - you can’t start writing their story? Well, over the last fourteen years I’ve been writing, I’ve felt that way plenty of times. But after publishing five books, I’ve developed a system I call the Naming Diamond, which makes it easy to create names that perfectly suit your characters. In today's episode, I'll show you how to use this tool.

Join 5,000+ writers who have taken my free 5-day character development course: https://jedherne.com/character

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Today, I'm joined by Michael Johnson. Three years ago, he joined my Story Coaching program to get my help with his first fantasy novel. That book — Children of Ziwei — is now published!

In this episode, I wanted to share Michael’s journey with you, so that you can see what it takes to go from idea to published book. Most importantly, you'll see how Michael overcame the creative challenges he faced along the way. This episode includes real clips from our coaching calls, so that you can see exactly how we fixed his story’s biggest problems and brought his book to life. So if you’re going through the process of writing a fantasy novel as well, you’re going to find this video extremely useful.

Watch the video version of this episode.

Want my personal help with your writing? Apply for my 12-week Fantasy Writing Bootcamp.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.