Story structure is one of those perennial topics in writing advice, and I haven’t talked about it for a while. So it’s probably time to revisit. I have two dressers in my bedroom. One was clearly made before the advent of mass production; the other was made
Read more →“Know your audience” is a piece of writing advice I hear a lot. I have never really understood what people mean by it. In almost every case, the explicitly stated reason behind giving the advice is that if one knows who one’s audience is, one can (and,
Read more →Would-be writers often go looking for help. Most turn to free online advice and/or groups like the NaNoWriMo community, look for people who will beta-read their work, or hunt up other writers to form a critique group (this last has gotten a lot easier with the rise
Read more →Last week, I had to put together a gadget I’d ordered. It wasn’t particularly intricate, just “ fit tab into slot and push gently until it clicks into place.” No problem. Except pushing gently didn’t work. Neither did pushing with steadily increasing effort. I finally had to
Read more →I’m off to my 50th college reunion, so chat among yourselves! Oh, and The Dark Lord’s Daughter is short-listed for the Mythopoeic Fantasy Award for Children’s Literature. So I will be going to Mythcon in August. 🙂
Read more →When I was in grade school, we had a regular “show and tell day.” Kids would bring in an object they thought was interesting, show it to everyone, and then explain what it was, how to use it, why they thought it was interesting, or whatever. It
Read more →“Your first idea is rarely the best one.” –Peter Attia That gets said a lot about writing, for good reason. One of the standard recommendations for developing a character, plot, or scene is to write a list of 20 things that could happen next, and then pick
Read more →Most of the time, people analyze story structure as a chain of actions and the consequences of those actions, leading to an eventual climax. While that’s true for a lot of writing, it ignores a critical factor that is so obvious and necessary that I, like many
Read more →Every so often, I run into someone who is…a bit confused about the way magic works in fantasies. They generally fall into one of two categories—either they have read that “a sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic” and interpreted it to mean “all magic is/should-be just
Read more →Words can mean more than they actually say. In real life, people commonly provide an indirect, implied answer to a question, instead of a direct one—“How do you like your hamburgers?” “I’m a vegetarian.” (implying “…so I don’t eat hamburgers, which means I don’t have a way
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