Mad Skills | Author J. Steven Young

“Showing” through Exposition: A Study

by Kathryn Craft | Sep 12, 2019 | Book Talk, charles dickens, Craft, Elizabeth Gilbert, exposition, How to be Good, Inspirations, Kathryn Craft, Mad Skills, Nick Hornby, show don't tell, Writing

photo adapted / Horia VarlanWhen writing teachers say “show, don’t tell,” they typically suggest doing so through dialogue, action, and sense imagery. Exposition, on the other hand—the writing that contextualizes the more active aspects of scene, and is often thought...

Give Your Reader an Experience

by Kathryn Craft | Aug 8, 2019 | Barbara Kingsolver, Book Talk, Craft, Inspirations, Kathryn Craft, Mad Skills, metaphors, overwriting, reading experience, Writing

photo adapted / Horia VarlanOur earliest attempts to fill a fresh, daunting expanse of novel-length white can be a bit like choosing crayons. We want colors that will show what our characters look like, how they feel, what they think about this or that. We want to...

Writing Book Club Fiction: What 5 Reading Guide Questions Can Teach Us

by Kathryn Craft | Jul 11, 2019 | Barbara Claypole White, book club fiction, Book Talk, Chris Bohjalian, Craft, Danielle Younge-Ullman, Delia Owens, Garth Stein, Inspirations, John Irving, Kathryn Craft, Lori Lansens, Mad Skills, Marketing, Markus Zusak, reading guide, REAL WORLD, Sue Monk Kidd, Writing

photo adapted / Horia VarlanLong before I started writing fiction, I belonged to numerous book clubs. For me, adding book-centered conversation to a glass of wine, snacks, and the chance to poke around in a neighbor’s house creates a perfect social event. Yet 90...

When Something Good Incites Story

by Kathryn Craft | Jun 13, 2019 | Book Talk, Craft, inciting incidents, Inspirations, Kathryn Craft, Kelly Harms, Mad Skills, Patricia Wood, story arc, Writing

photo adapted / Horia VarlanA story arc is launched when something happens to a protagonist that knocks her off her rails. Life did not go as expected this day, and in fact, life may never seem the same again. You may call this event something else, but I use the...

6 Tips for Creating Good Bridging Conflict

by Kathryn Craft | May 9, 2019 | bridging conflict, Craft, Kathryn Craft, Mad Skills, novel opening, opening scenes, Writing

photo adapted / Horia VarlanTo write a novel is to invite your reader on a journey. Once she gets to the station for departure, don’t expect her to be satisfied watching the train sit on the tracks. Or taking a tour of its cars. Or watching its engine be tugged from...

Story Collections as Novel Prompts

by Kathryn Craft | Apr 11, 2019 | Book Talk, inspiration, Inspirations, John Cheever, Kathryn Craft, learning the craft, Mad Skills, REAL WORLD, short stories, short story collections, Writing, Writing life, writing prompts

photo adapted / Horia VarlanMany aspiring novelists learn their craft by first writing short stories. This makes oodles of sense: the character’s goal is more immediate, its complications are fewer, and the supporting cast is more manageable. With the end never far...

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Featured Books

What if wands were alive?

For one clumsy and inexperienced mage, his life and everything he knows about wands changes when they begin talking to him. Sparkle is an ancient and powerful wand who has not chosen a bond mate in longer than recorded history. On a dare from another and much younger wand, Sparkle has chosen to bond with Dillard Muckledun. Unexpected and powerful magic is rekindled when the two eventually learn to accept what is happening to them.

There hasn’t been such a pairing of powerful magic in centuries. There are secrets and corrections to history to come.

This is the magical world told from the wand’s point of view.

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MacKenzie Dillon serves as a as a protectorate soldier in the New Republic, a new order that was created from the ravaged mind of a leader who had long ago given up his sanity. Now the New Republic is protected by a wall that keeps out everything that exists in the Wastes and keeps everything within it subjected to the severest restrictions of freedom and mental conditioning.

But MacKenzie is having flashbacks from his youth. The conditioning he has undergone is failing and with it comes a new realization that he is not what he thought he was. Confused by the change in circumstances, he takes on a role that allows him to infiltrate the resistance.