It is, fortunately, time for another Open Mic! Speak amongst yourselves while I try to get my router fixed before it is time to post next week.
Read more →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 →I recently read a book that I found deeply frustrating because nearly all of the action-adventure part of the plot happened offstage. The viewpoint – who was consistently presented as the protagonist – only found out about the action later, when someone came back bloody and beaten
Read more →Every writer I know is a voracious reader, and has been for a long, long time. Most of us are omnivorous as well as voracious – we not only read a lot, we read widely, from literary classics to pulp fiction, and from every genre available. Reading
Read more →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 →The community here has done a bang-up job of making suggestions for finding a writing group in last week’s Open Mic comments, but I’m going to add my two cents here. It’s been a while since I talked about writing groups. And the first thing I have
Read more →Once again, it is time to talk amongst yourselves while I deal with my current crop of household emergencies. (My water heater and a/c both sprang leaks in the same week…so it is a happy coincidence that this is Open Mic week! And yes, it will be
Read more →One of my best friends is in need of some writing advice. She says: “I have vague ideas, or scenes, or a few lines of dialogue about a given idea, which I try to make notes of as they come. But I don’t know how or have
Read more →Some thirty-plus years ago, shortly after I sold my second novel and was well on my way to writing my third, I met up with a college friend whom I hadn’t seen since graduation. We talked a bit about what we’d done; I mentioned that my first
Read more →A lot of writers stall at the very beginning of story construction – at the idea stage – because they have never thought about the difference between situations, incidents/events, and actual plot, much less how to move from any one of these to any of the others.
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