It has taken me a long, long time to really begin to understand how the story structures people describe—the various act structures, the hero’s journey, the pick-a-number “basic plots,” and so on—interact with the writing process for different writers. A large part of the problem is that
Read more →Having lost the past week to the Anthropic mess, I am going to indulge myself in a minor rant. Bear in mind that I am neither a lawyer nor a computer programmer, and there are much broader issues than just the ones that affect published writers. For
Read more →Pacing is one of those things that most writers have to learn by doing. You need a feel for what’s working and what isn’t, the same way a marathon runner needs a feel for how much their body can do and still finish the race. Except that
Read more →So last time we met, I mentioned the two basic ways of turning a single short story into a novel: adding complications, subplots, characters and conflicts within the confines of the original story, or continuing on from the end of the short story (and letting the extra
Read more →So I got a little confused about dates last week, and forgot that this week is an Open Mic. That means that next week is when I will be talking about turning a single short story into a novel, and this week everybody else gets to talk about
Read more →
