There are some questions that all writers get, over and over and over. Anything that is repeated that many times gets very old, very fast. One of the most irritatingly common questions is the perennial “Where do you get your ideas?” But even more irritating are the
Read more →Well, based on the comments in last week’s Open Mic, it looks like I’m going to be talking about structure and endings for a while. Rowan M got in first, with a request for a post about length—specifically, how you tell how long a story will be
Read more →“Getting an idea” is a bit like having a bowl full of flour. You can stir in some sugar and salt and baking powder and spices, and you still have a bowl of white powder that doesn’t stick together to make anything. You can cut in a
Read more →A couple of weeks back, Rachel asked this: I was wondering how you work with and extend story ideas without getting bored? Because I have a habit of writing or imagining “moments” that really interest me, certain people or situations that last a page or two, but
Read more →Lately I’ve been seeing a lot of advice online for “creatives”. The trouble is, almost none of the advice takes into consideration the way “being creative” actually works. If you need to fix the broken hinge on the back screen door, it’s relatively easy to break the
Read more →At the beginning of a novel, anything can happen, and it’s easy to change things one doesn’t like. Your heroine starts off sitting on a rock by Cape Canaveral, longingly watching the rockets take off, and three paragraphs in it suddenly occurs to you that she’s a
Read more →“The best ideas don’t need to be sought out at all; you just have to train yourself not to swerve out of the way when they jump out in front of you.” – Jon Forss Brainstorming is a mental activity, so it is unsurprising that most of
Read more →“The best way to have a good idea is to have a lot of ideas, and only keep the good ones.” – Linus Pauling Once you know how you work best and what you do and do not know about your story, you actually have to sit
Read more →Once you have an idea of the kinds of plots you like, how much you need to know to get started (and how much you need to not-know in order to keep going), and the kinds of things that seem to trigger good ideas for you, you
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