January 25, 2012 – 9:50 am
For a certain kind of writer, the opening of a story is easy and fun - you get to allude to mysterious events and drop ominous clues. And then comes the middle, where all the stuff you’ve been alluding to has to start showing up and actually turning into something, and everything falls apart.
The first, [...]
January 22, 2012 – 6:30 am
The whole point of a good prologue is to do something that the writer cannot do in the main part of the story without violating some important aspect of storytelling, like chronology or viewpoint or continuity. For instance, if the main story is told entirely from the viewpoint of one central character and takes place [...]
January 18, 2012 – 6:26 am
Prologues are out of favor these days, one of the “forbidden” (by whom?) writing techniques, yet people keep asking about them because they know intuitively that the technique has enormous possibilities. Quite a few folks go ahead and use them anyway. Sometimes this works brilliantly; other times, not so much…and the problematic usages reinforce the [...]
December 28, 2011 – 8:17 am
The holiday season is a time for parties, especially the sort of parties that people throw in order to introduce interesting friends and neighbors to other interesting friends and neighbors they haven’t met but might like. It’s a great way to meet interesting people, and the first thing most of them ask is, “So, what [...]
September 18, 2011 – 6:15 am
How did you know that you wanted to be a writer?
I didn’t. I never, ever wanted to “be a writer.” I wanted to write. I wanted to tell stories. I wanted to get these blasted characters out of my head and nailed down on paper so I wouldn’t have to keep thinking about them.
Being a [...]
September 11, 2011 – 6:25 am
I’ve talked before about the opening of a story and some of the things that can go wrong with the all-drama, all-action, all-the-time “hook.” But it occurs to me that I haven’t talked much about what a hook is, or how to do it right. Hence today’s post.
Openings are important; nobody denies that. In my mother’s [...]
September 4, 2011 – 6:38 am
Back in grade school, when they taught us to write essays, the first step was always “decide on a topic,” and the second one was “make an outline/plan.” Nowadays there’s a lot more focus on creativity, i.e., writing fiction instead of essays. Based on what I’ve seen in school visits and from talking with teachers [...]
February 16, 2011 – 6:30 am
“I don’t CARE what happens to these people.” - Dorothy J. Heydt
Stories are, at bottom, about people (or people-analogs, like anthropomorphized talking animals). But more than that, they’re about people or people-analogs that the reader cares about. Hooks and cliffhangers, opening in medias res, lots of fast-paced action, brilliant worldbuilding, intricate plots - all these [...]
December 12, 2010 – 6:27 am
It has become a truism in writing that one should always open a story with a “hook” - something that grabs the reader and pulls them into the story, forcing them to keep reading. The problem with this is that what “hooks” one reader will annoy or repel another, and this is seldom acknowledged by [...]
September 15, 2010 – 10:18 am
Starting a completely new story is exciting. There aren’t any constraints to worry about: no dangling plot threads that you have to tie up, no previously established background that you have to stay consistent with, no inconvenient mysteries or revelations that you’re stuck with. It’s a clean slate, full of fresh new possibilities.
At least, it is [...]