Motivation, according to my trusty Oxford American Dictionary, is “that which induces a person to act a certain way.” I like that definition a lot better than some of the others I ran across, including “inspiration,” “the desire to do something,” and “enthusiasm,” among others. The reason
Read more →I’m still listening to that 12-hour series of lectures on literature, and today’s talk was about plot. Practically the first thing the lecturer did was to quote the thing about there being only two plots: the hero takes a journey, and a stranger comes to town. I’ve
Read more →So MaKayla asked about deadlines, specifically whether they’re good or bad, interfere with the process or enrich it, etc. The answer is “It depends on the writer.” I know writers who freeze up at the mere thought of a deadline, and writers who can’t seem to write
Read more →Last time, I talked about ways to get series backstory (the stuff that has happened in the previous books of a series) into the sort of series that’s really a three- or five- or seven-volume novel split into parts. Today I’m talking about the backstory for the
Read more →Every so often I get an email request from one of the readers of this blog, asking me to address a particular writing question. This week’s inquiry boils down to “When you’re writing a series, and you’re on book three (or five or nineteen), how much backstory
Read more →I’m back home at last, after a solid week without a decent internet connection (hence the lack of a post last Wednesday. My apologies). Conjecture was great fun; I recommend it to the attention of anyone in the San Diego area around this time next year. The
Read more →Today I decided to talk about frame stories. “Frame story” is a bit of a misnomer; it’s actually short for “story with a frame,” and it’s a very specific story structure in which the opening (whether that’s the prologue, Chapter One, or the first scene) and closing
Read more →The trip continues; we have reached LA after a stop in Las Vegas (neither of us did any gambling, but we ate some great food and saw Cirque du Soleil’s Mystere). And in justice to my father, I have to point out that when he ran off
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