Wednesday links: More on waking characters, guns, and knives

I love regularly reading tips and advice articles in certain subjects — particularly writing and publishing. I don’t always need the information right then, but I know that it’ll eventually come in handy. Or at least, I hope it will.

I know there are a lot of other people out there who feel the same way I do, but sometimes it can be difficult to find every useful advice article that’s out there. So I thought I’d bring you a few. Here are the tips and advice articles that jumped out at me the most over the past week.

1. Perils of waking character openings – take 2, from Pub Rants: This post is a follow-up to one I linked to last week. In it, Kristin Nelson expands on her thoughts of having a character wake up as an opening scene. Excerpt: “With over 7000 people reached on Facebook and untold number of Twitter shares, I obviously hit some kind of nerve. We should entitle these last two blog entries: The Perils of Writing About Novel Openings With Characters Awakening.”

2. 5 Minutes to Writing Better Guns and Knives, from Writer’s Digest: Realistic workings of guns and knives are something that I’m sure a lot of people need to work on. I know I certainly do. “If you want to bust a tired trope and look sharp in a story, insert an assisted opener whenever you get the itch to write in a switchblade. And if you still feel itchy, I recommend getting that thing checked out.”