Loglines v. Tag Lines

Mpepper/ October 26, 2022/ Writing, Writing Advice

I read a tweet a little while ago about “high-concept stories” and how they can be distilled into a single sentence. This is, generally speaking, true. But then the example given was… Well, I’m not going to post it, but it was not a high-concept logline. It was more of a tag line. You know, the kind of thing you’d

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Unpopular Opinion

Mpepper/ September 19, 2022/ Think Pieces, Writing

One of many, to be sure. But I have to admit, I’m struggling. I love me some Stranger Things, so much so that I wrote a story loosely based on Steve and Eddie (#steddie) that has since become my most popular work. (The sequel is due out in November, so go pre-order “One Night in Wyland High.”) All this to

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One Night in Wildcat Woods

Mpepper/ August 5, 2022/ Announcements, Writing

My #steddie-inspired story about two teen boys lost in the woods behind their high school is now up on Amazon, so I’ve had to remove the PDF. To be clear, this isn’t directly fan fiction; it’s fanfic adjacent. And not explicit in its steamy scenes. 1989. Though Drew and Rayze were friends in childhood, they’ve long since grown apart–until the

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Is It YA?

Mpepper/ September 7, 2021/ Writing, Writing Advice

I get a lot of questions about age categories for books. It seems the lines have become somewhat blurred as more and more adults pick up young adult, and even middle grade, novels. So many writers think that, based on their characters’ ages, their book must be x, y, or z. But character age is not the only—or even the

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FanFic Ask Game

Mpepper/ June 19, 2021/ Writing

I found this online and thought it would be fun to answer some fan fiction questions. I’ve chosen A Game of Hearts, which is kind of cheating since it’s actually a collection of seven stories, but I also think it’s my best-known and most ambitious fic. It’s the one people are most likely to ask about, I think? Anyway, buckle

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Falcon and Winter Soldier Improv

Mpepper/ June 13, 2021/ Writing

We did a family improv night and one of the prompts was: Sam, Bucky and Zemo waiting in line for a roller coaster. The kids are still getting the hang of improv, so they weren’t able to take the scene very far. I, on the other hand, may have gone beyond… I ended up sending my daughter a series of

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Current Projects

Mpepper/ March 12, 2021/ Writing

Recently, I finished a fan fiction piece I’d been working on. I enjoyed writing it, but it was something of a relief to be done because I have so many other things going on. Still, I chose to focus on and finish that particular project first because 1. it was close to finished anyway, so it was the fastest way

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