Bad communication

It is ironic that in these days of instant messaging so many plots still depend on two or more central characters not communicating effectively with each other. OK, a lot of pre-Internet stories depend on someone missing a phone call or a messenger, but at least someone

Read more

Crowds vs. Councils

It’s here! The Dark Lord’s Daughter is officially out. I’m excited and anxious and hopeful and lots of other things, which will probably last a couple of weeks until I have some idea how it’s doing. Meantime, I have a blog post to give you. This week

Read more

Villains, Part 2

Wow, people in comments have already covered a lot of what I was going to say about villains in this one. I still have a few things to add, though… Starting with: What kind of villain suits your story? If you’re writing The Lord of the Rings,

Read more

Well-rounded villains, part 1

Look at any book or blog of fiction-writing advice, and you will most likely find a bunch of statements about the desirability of complex, well-rounded characters. Some give you twenty-page questionnaires to fill out in advance of writing, as if listing a character’s flaws and childhood traumas

Read more

Finding a plot

I’ve been plot-noodling with a couple of primarily character-centered writers lately, and I’ve noticed that they both have a similar problem. Most of the time, they don’t even see the places where they are dropping plot-hints…and when they do see them, they don’t immediately recognize them. One

Read more

Borrowing

Borrowing One of the shortcuts a writer can use for any of the Big Three story elements (plot, characters, setting/backstory) is to borrow them from somewhere else. “Somewhere else” covers a lot of ground; the caveat is that if one is going to borrow from anything that

Read more

Character “goals”

The idea that every character must have a goal and a motivation, not only for the overall story/plot but for each and every scene in that story, has always been something that I have had trouble with. That is, until I realized that my difficulty was due

Read more

What’s the real problem?

Every story has a central problem that the protagonist needs to deal with. Sometimes, the protagonist deals with it successfully; sometimes they fail. The problem may be something the protagonist doesn’t have but wants, something they need to do, something they need to realize, something they need

Read more