Doug Langille

Husband, father, writer and shameless technophile.

WriteTips

Writing & Mental Wellness, Part 2

2 minute read

The internet is both a terrible and wonderful place. I’d been in a funk for about a year or so. I hadn’t written much and I finished even less. It was a symp...

Writing & Mental Wellness, Part 1

2 minute read

Mental wellness plagues society at large. Life is demanding and our resilience is low. The world asks a lot of us. Our families, our friends, our work. And e...

Your Story Needs an Audience

2 minute read

Art is an interestingly human form of expression. Somewhere between the amygdala and the cortex, our brains can conjure the most amazing things.

NaNoWriMo

3 minute read

One piece of oft-spoken writing advice is to write every day.

Goal Setting

2 minute read

“How do you eat an elephant?” “One bite at a time.”

Snowflake Method?

3 minute read

I love writing scenes and flash pieces from writing prompts. In fact, I’ve written hundreds of them. Pantsing out 750 words at a time is downright exhilarati...

A Return to Longhand?

2 minute read

I spend a lot of time reflecting on my process: what works, what doesn’t. That kind of thing. Such naval-gazing is a wonderful alternative to actual writing....

How Do You Create Your Characters?

1 minute read

Over the holidays, I was asked about the many characters in my stories and how I come up with them. I wasn’t able to provide a very good answer because I ten...

How Not to Be a Jerk Online

3 minute read

It goes without saying that being active on the Internet requires a thick skin. With social media tools like Facebook, we now all create content whether we r...

How Do You Respond to a Writing Challenge?

1 minute read

It’s easy to burn yourself out creatively when meeting writing deadlines or undertaking insanity projects like NaNoWriMo. Sometimes, it’s just mood and the c...

Writing Motivation

2 minute read

I don’t want to write this post. I don’t feel like it. Actually, I don’t feel like writing a cotton-pickin’ thing. Surely, there is something on TV? Nope. Da...

Fear of Failure or Rejection?

1 minute read

What keeps you from writing the story that’s been tumbling in your head forever? What keeps you from posting here? What keeps you from pressing that dreaded ...

On Heroes and Villains

1 minute read

When I was in Grade Ten, I performed in a one act play. I can’t, for the life of me, remember what it was called. Checks Google. It was called ‘He Done Her W...

Finding Inspiration in Nature

1 minute read

Creating art is a curious and beautiful synthesis of observation and imagination. Too often, we focus on what what happens within our brain-case. The common ...

Plot, Premise and Story

1 minute read

We’ve all been there: staring at the screen or notebook wondering how to write the middle of your story. You’ve built a wonderful world and crafted some deep...

10 Ways to Make Your Blog Posts Better

3 minute read

Part of the whole writing gig is, well, writing. It’s pretty much a given that authors build a platform to market and promote their word-babies to the masses...

A Quick Tour of Social Media for Writers

2 minute read

Part of the writing game is marketing (talking about your work) and publicity (getting others to talk about your work). And that generally means using social...

Romance Versus Erotica

6 minute read

Oh, this is going to be fun! A couple of months ago I wrote ‘The (Not So) Definitive Guide to Romance Novels’ for Reader’s Carnival . It got me to thinking (...

For Love of the Short Story

3 minute read

Grok walked into the cave, tired and hungry. Today’s hunt bore little bounty and dusk quickly advanced into night. A solitary rabbit for his tribe would keep...

Writing Rituals

7 minute read

Last week, I posed the following to my fellow writers:

Writing Software and Tools

3 minute read

Writers, like many artisans, love to talk about the tools and techniques of their trade. Honing and tweaking their systems becomes a near-obsession in itself.

Book to Big Screen: Divergent

2 minute read

I’ve always been a fan of dystopian fiction. I remember one of my first experiences was with John Wyndham’s ‘The Chyrsalids’. From that point on, I was hooke...

All About Using Images

4 minute read

So, you’ve lovingly tapped out ‘The End’ at the bottom of your masterpiece. Huffing a breath of relief that you’ve done it: your word baby is born and you wa...

Words to Kill

less than 1 minute read

Part of the self-editing process (you do self-edit, right?) is to clean-up passive voice, needless adverbs and filler words. This is typically done in a pass...

The Men That Don't Fit In

2 minute read

Some of the best memories of my grandfather are of Robert W. Service. Gramp would, at every opportunity, recite from memory any number of poems. We’d goad hi...

Reading at the Speed of Light

2 minute read

“The more that you read, the more things you will know. The more that you learn, the more places you’ll go.” — Dr. Seuss

From Book to Screen: Bitten

3 minute read

When announced that Kelley Armstrong’s first book, ‘Bitten’, was headed for the small screen, fans were pretty darned stoked.

(Not So) Definitive Guide to Romance Novels

2 minute read

So, when I opted to write this article on romance novels, my first thought was that I had to ask for help. When I did so, I was swiftly told to hand in my ‘M...

How to Read for Enjoyment

2 minute read

The pursuit of happiness is not a fool’s errand, but what makes people happy? Consider the moment when you’re completely lost in the plot of a good book, on ...

Genres in a Nutshell

3 minute read

Walk in to any bookstore or library and we are confronted by the ‘Genre Beast’. There are many ways to categorize books and genre is but one. Bookstores are ...

Essential Jack Whyte

3 minute read

Do you love historical adventure sagas that span the centuries? Can the Arthur legends be true? What’s the real story behind the Knights Templar? Is there mo...

On Taking Criticism

less than 1 minute read

A writer’s heart is an untamed beast. Tho from his quill flows a reader’s feast, Not all words are diamonds written. Sometimes the author’s ego’s bitten.‎