Howdy, readers & writers, welcome to #WritingCamp🏕️ 2026, a hashtag I made up for fun to give me an excuse to write out some writing craft advice, models, and lore over the course of the summer months.
I have been posting daily writerly tips, tricks, and tactics.
Here is a running archive of the camp poasts thus far:
#1 – Likable Toons
How do we craft likable characters? Do we need them likable?
Yes and no. Some replace with “interesting” — use your own adjective. Ultimately we want our main characters to be something folk stick around for.
Your characters should delight YOU.
#2 – Reading
What to read? How much to read? Do I need to read my comps? Yes, yes, and yes.
You should read as much as you can. But remove the “need” and embrace your intuition. What do you want to read?
What you wish to write will inform your reading diet.
#3 – Outlining
Outlining Outlining is important for most authors. It becomes a question of ‘how much?’
I tend to improvise short fiction and detail outline my novels, because I find the structure helps excite me – and force me to write!
For me, outlining motivates.
#4 – Tips & Tricks
Top tips for writing well:
1. Read!
2. World-Build via your IRL exp & stimuli
3. Character Conflicts = Dialectics
4. Use “visions”
5. ‘Think of where the camera will be’
6. Outlining: try Hero’s Journey 1st
7. Make something you Love
ARTICLE: Top 7 Creative Writing Tips
#5 – My Canon
My personal canon of Great Books every author could benefit from:
– Homer’s Iliad & Odyssey
– Dante’s Inferno & Milton’s Paradise
– The Bible
– Frankenstein
– LOTR
– Dune
– Hyperion
– Neuromancer
– Cormac McCarthy & Ursula K. Le Guin
#6 – Story Circle
Dan Harmon, writer of Community and Rick & Morty, utilizes the ‘Story Circle’ variation of the Hero’s Journey. Useful way of quickly determining the motive x action x meaning of your story. Whether it is an episode, short story, or novel.
#7 – Chaptercraft
I started with fiction doing short stories. Twilight Zone & Goosebumps inspiration. And going into novels I have found that I end up writing *chapters* similar to short stories: a) by length (3-5K words) as well as b) micro-story arcs. 🃏
For me, it does help to think of a novel as almost like 20-30 short stories, with each chapter being like so.
That’s another good rule of thumb – a standard size 300-pager novel is gonna shake out to about 20 chapters @ 4K words = 80K
A *long* novel will have 30+ chapters.
translation: It’s a nightmare you have while awake. I’m referring to a work by Yumeaki Hirayama. “For me, printed words are visualized in my mind, so novels are something to be seen, but the author who best embodies this is ‘The Story of What I Did to a Pelican in the Park,’ which is troublesome because it features a succession of ominous and bizarre characters and insane words that don’t exist in my mental stock of images, forcing me to visualize them.” Experience this irreplaceable flavor for yourself. ~ Yoshihiro Togashi Author of ‘HUNTER×HUNTER
#8 – C.S. Lewis Advice
A short, general list of simple rules for writing from the legendary fantasy author and Christian philosopher C.S. Lewis:
1. Quiet Zone
2. Read good books, no mags
3. Ear not Eye, read aloud
4. Pursue *interests*
5. Be clear
6. Keep abandoned work
7. Seek a ‘rhythm’
8. Use a dictionary/thesaurus
#9 – Hero’s Journey
Classic archetype. Modern screenwriter formula. Infinite variations, the core is: 1) Ordinary World > 2) Ordeal in Special World >> 3) Transformation into New World.
Heroes meet mentors, endure trials, delve caves, duels nemesis, wins love. 🌄
~ to be continued
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Thresholds of Transformation 