Hyba Is Writing

Scareuary 2025 Schedule It's that time of year... That spooky time of year... No, it's not October. It's Scareuary! Welcome to the second ever Scareuary, taking place from February 1st - 28th. Here are the weekly events this year, but you can do them anytime during the month. Coppe's Webbe - Feb. 1st - 7th A staple in the Scareuary horror writing challenge, the Coppe's Webbe has you randomly generate a word from this list (simply refresh the page to generate) and create a spooky web of stories, snippets, or even poems related to the word you've generated.    COPPE'S WEBBE SCHEDULE February 1: Generate We'll be generating our words and sharing them! You can also share any preliminary ideas that you have for creepy stories/snippets/etc to write based on those words. February 2-7: Spin the Web! Having trouble with your word and want a brainstorming buddy? Send your word in as an ask and I'll respond with 5 different spooky ideas to get you started....

Flashcarding The City of Light - Issues, Troubleshooting, Avoiding Major Edits I never got the chance to flashcard The City of Light (I was focused on The Pirates of Sissa for quite a while), but now that I am, I'm so glad that I decided to do this. I'm finding issues with sequence of events, and already considering solutions. And there are elements missing in-between certain plot events, which is really obvious when you look at it from a bird's eye view. And then there are reactive/active scenes, and plot holes that have popped up regarding timeline, and so on. Example: Someone observes how the mysterious disease works and does end up having a very spot-on theory which they share with Alev. The problem? This doesn't happen until quite late in the story - which isn't an issue in and of itself - but the person makes these observations much earlier on. The flashcards helped me see just how far apart the two events are, when really they should be much closer togethe...

Horror Writing Course: Assessment Methods In my horror writing course, there are two forms of assessing student learning: quizzes and the final project. Though the final project is optional, the quizzes are prerequisites, meaning students must complete the quizzes in order to move forward with their course. Moreover, if students wish to earn their certificate of completion, they must complete the final project, which is a short story utilizing specific techniques taught in the course.  The quizzes include multiple-choice and true/false questions in order to assess reading comprehension and understanding of the lessons. Quizzes can be repeated as many times as needed, and each correct or incorrect answer reveals an explanation to help learners solidify their learning. Since I do not believe in punishing learners for errors or misunderstandings (that is, after all, an integral part of the learning experience and should not be punished), this form of assessment felt like a good approa...

TRANSCRIPT: S04EP01 Writing a Book in a Year Listen to the episode here. Or check it out below: Hello! It’s 2025, and you’re still listening to Hyba Is Writing. I’m still your host, Hyba, and today’s episode is all about a specific new year’s resolution that you might have as a writer: writing a book in a year. If that sounds like something that’s interesting to you, go ahead and subscribe to my newsletter, and you’ll be able to download your free copy of the book in a year guide, which will help you get organized so that you can, in fact, finish a book in a year. In this episode, I want to walk through the general idea behind the guide, and to give you a little bit of additional guidance as you create your own goals and schedules. So, the book in a year guide was something that I personally wanted to create not just for writers everywhere but also for myself. I’m a bit of a weird personality when it comes to scheduling myself, because a lot of the tried-and-true methods that p...

Horror Writing Course: Origins and Backing Philosophy As you may have already heard, I've been working on a horror writing course for writers who want to dive into the world of horror story writing. This was, at the beginning, as much for me as it was for other writers. I had been looking online for a horror writing course that matched my needs, but couldn't find one that quite fit the bill. For example, some were too light (one was only a few webinars) and often too vague - and all too many were much too costly.   I had to do a lot of my own research and trial-and-error and learning in order to improve my horror writing skills, often looking in places that had nothing to do with horror writing, but which were relevant to helping me hone the techniques and skills required.  To do this yourself is not impossible, but it is extremely time-consuming, and often yields results that are far too little in comparison with the sheer amount of time and effort that goes into doing t...

I tried AI for the first time... Hm. I tried AI today for the first time, and gave it a prompt to outline an article, and then to draft the article. I've never generated any writing with AI before, but I've had very definite thoughts about it, and since someone wanted me to use it for a job-related task, I decided to try it out and see what everyone was so addicted to. First thoughts: It's surprisingly good at understanding complex prompts. I actually didn't expect it to pick up on a few things I put in the prompt, but it managed to touch upon every single point. I thought I might confuse it, but apparently not. It provides a clear and concise draft, which I also didn't expect. It reads smoothly, and there's a logic to the way the information is presented. I'm not really liking the final results, though, because they still feel a bit bare, and that's probably a good thing because at least it means that it could still benefit from the huma...