October’s Open Mike has arrived! Chat amongst yourselves, brag, ask questions, complain about your WIPs, whatever you want. I am basking in the knowledge that I am in between the rough draft and the editorial revisions, so I actually have time for a few other things…
Read more →Over the years, I’ve noticed that at a lot of conventions, there’s a writing-advice panel with a title like “Picking Writing Tips and Tricks that Work for You.” They almost always end up going in one of two directions—either they turn into a list of the tips
Read more →From the outside, publishing used to look a bit like an enormous skyscraper, maybe shaped a bit like a pyramid, with a tiny top poking out of the clouds above and a row of doors at the bottom with the names of editors and agents written on
Read more →“Practice drafts” are my least favorite thing about writing. It took me years to admit I sometimes need them, and longer still to actually implement them in any useful way, and I don’t use them very often even now. But when I need them, they’re really useful.
Read more →There are two basic kinds of stretchy writing projects: the deliberate ones and the accidental ones. The deliberate ones are, well, deliberate. The writer knows they have a weak spot, or a particular technique that they’ve never tried, so they deliberately design a project that’s going to
Read more →The longer (and to some extent, the more successfully) one has been writing, the easier it is to see that there are no rules or recipes. There is no “right answer” for most writing questions. There is only “a possible right answer for this story” or “an
Read more →Once again, it’s time for an Open Mike/Mic! Ask questions, complain about your vampire ducks or celebrate slaying them, or just grumble about the weather. Whatever you want.
Read more →Ages ago, when I had a day job, my department got sent to one of those “team building” workshops. The first exercise, oddly, was to write a description of one’s “ideal day” — that impossible normal day when everything went perfectly all day long. When some of
Read more →Another question: I can do my own voice, or a child’s voice. That’s it. I have no idea how to figure out how another character would speak, especially someone who has a big speaking part. How do you improve at this? Is there a way to research
Read more →Writing is a complicated balancing act. It’s not just a two-factor problem—this much dialog versus that much action. It’s dialog balanced against action balanced against description balanced against characterization; pacing vs. clarity vs. structure vs. depth; outlining vs. drafting vs. revising. The thing about complicated balancing acts
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