… I bog down in considerations of what the readers need to know, and if don’t put it right at the beginning then when, and how many flashbacks can one novel support? Part two of the now-three-part answer to this, i.e. “There are a lot of ways
Read more →I am still struggling with the WIP. After going to COsine in Colorado Springs, I became convinced that I’m starting in the wrong place and doing too much scene-setting, but when I try to revise I bog down in considerations of what the readers need to know,
Read more →Writers are highly distractable people. In part, this is because it always looks like more fun to chase the cool new story idea than to slog through the miserable middle of whatever one is currently writing. (Okay, it doesn’t just look like more fun…) In part, it’s
Read more →Once again, it is an Open Mic week! Chat amongst yourselves while I catch up on the 957 emails that have collected in my in-box…
Read more →The most common recommendations for increasing tension in a story are things like “raise the stakes, again and again,” “make sure your readers care about the characters/conflict,” “hold back information,” and “use cliffhangers.” The basic assumption seems to be that most writers have trouble putting their characters
Read more →One of the writer complaints I hear regularly about plotting is some variation on “I can’t come up with a plot that’s compelling for the reader. I can’t make the reader care about what happens to the characters. I can’t make the reader care about what’s at
Read more →In many ways, stories are a balancing act, and the balance point for every story depends on exactly what the author is juggling and how much of whatever-it-is they have to keep in the air. A guy riding a unicycle is a balancing act, but so is
Read more →Modern technology is great. It lets me change a character’s name in an entire manuscript with the flick of a button, without having to retype the whole thing. It checks spelling. It lets me send copies of my work to my crit group without spending a fortune
Read more →For purposes of this post, I’m defining “the writing process” as “how people go about getting words on the page.” Not getting ideas, not developing them, not laying down plot or characterization, though all of those things are involved or affected by process. (Writing is a massive
Read more →Happy 2023, everybody! It’s a new year, and this is when nearly everybody (including me) takes at least a few minutes to think about what they want to get done in the coming year. “Write a book” is a perennial favorite. So I thought I’d try to
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