November 14, 2012 – 6:10 am
Let me start by pointing out that I’ve never written a screenplay myself. I’ve read some, and I’ve worked with some doing novelizations, but that’s a bit different from writing them myself. I feel the need to point this out because I keep running into folks who think that because I write novels, I can [...]
It is an odd and interesting thing that in a group of professional liars and their willing audiences, there are so many people who are so deeply concerned with telling the truth. Fiction is made-up – that’s part of the basic definition (though calling it a flat-out lie is perhaps an exaggeration) – yet it [...]
This is the last part of Chapter 1 of Shadow Magic, as revised ten years later for the omnibus Shadows Over Lyra. Strikethroughs are the deletions from the original; plain text is the original that was kept; bold are additions. Italics are my comments, which are few on this part. Bracor led them inside and [...]
This is the third part of Chapter 1 of Shadow Magic, as revised ten years later for Shadows Over Lyra, and the second of the posts that was supposed to come up while I was away, but didn’t because I am apparently incapable of properly using the scheduler. The final part will go up tomorrow. Plain text [...]
This is the next part of Chapter 1 of Shadow Magic, as revised ten years later for Shadows Over Lyra. Plain text is the original version; strikethrough is what I deleted; boldface is what I added. Italics are my comments on why I did what I did. “I’ll mind,” Maurin muttered, too low for Har [...]
Last week, I suggested that people find books that have been reedited by their authors for a years-later reprint, and compare before-and-after versions. To show you what I mean, I’m going to post the first chapter of my first novel, Shadow Magic, which came out in 1982 and which I revised ten years later for an omnibus edition. It’s going [...]
January 18, 2010 – 8:13 am
How do you decide where a story starts? Stories, short or long, generally are not about characters who are happily living their normal lives. Something unusual is going on; something has upset the status quo (whether the status quo was a miserable life as a slave, or a happy life as a king). Stories therefore [...]
January 12, 2010 – 11:29 am
If people would ask writers where they get their titles, instead of where they get their ideas, they’d probably get a lot more interesting answers much of the time. In my experience, it’s really difficult for most writers to articulate exactly where they got the idea for something (except in those few cases where it’s [...]
October 13, 2009 – 6:17 pm
For some reason, I keep running into writers – mostly those who aren’t yet published, but sometimes ones who are – who seem to have gotten the impression that there is some sort of checklist that editors work through before they’ll buy a book. I ran into one recently who had a whole list of [...]
Last weekend, at 4th Street Fantasycon, somebody asked me for a post that I did years back on Usenet, on the difference between the way short story writers and novelists might develop the same basic story idea. Here it is: Basically, short stories require a tight focus and a single, central plot thread; in a [...]