What sort of difficulties do you run into during the wrap-up? I would expect it to be smooth sailing since you tend to know when to stop. -NcT2 First off, there are two things going on after the story climax: validation and wrap-up. They can happen simultaneously,
Read more →Open Mike Question: How do you deal with the waiting period after you submit to agents? I just finished my first book and sent it out to a handful of agents, and I can’t help thinking about it and waiting and wondering all the time, but there’s
Read more →April 2.5 through April 5, 2026, Patricia will be Guest of Honor at Minicon in Minneapolis. All programming is at the DoubleTree by Hilton Hotel Bloomington – Minneapolis South, 7800 Normandale Blvd, Bloomington, MN 55439. Details at https://mnstf.org/minicon59/.
Read more →Open mike again already! Talk about whatever you like. I finally got the climax finished, in spite of all the life chaos! Now I need the wrap-up, and then I can send it off to my editor, and start The Next Thing while I wait for revisions
Read more →“The best way to have a good idea is to have lots of ideas and only keep the good ones.” – Linus Pauling I love that quote—it applies to so many things besides ideas—but it begs the question: how can you tell which ones are the good
Read more →Just as “villain” and “antagonist” are frequently used as synonyms, “hero” and “protagonist” are also confused a lot. But there is an added factor for some people, namely, where “main character” and “viewpoint character” fit. So first, some definitions and examples. “Main character” is a somewhat broader
Read more →“Villain” and “Antagonist” are frequently used as synonyms, because they fill roughly the same niche in a story. They aren’t quite the same thing, though. Villains are fundamentally evil; antagonists aren’t necessarily evil, or even bad. Stories always have some sort of antagonist, but that antagonist is
Read more →Writing books and classes are really fond of writing exercises, especially the ones that are intended for classroom use. I hated them for years—to me, they always seemed like a waste of time. I wanted to be attempting to write pay copy, even if my “pay copy”
Read more →Fourth Street Fantasy Convention has been one of my favorite cons—in both its incarnations—for years. Some years, I have a love/hate relationship with it, but I keep coming back. This year was no exception—I spent last weekend there, which is why you are getting a summary rather
Read more →It’s open mike day again! Chat amongst yourselves, brag, complain, nag, ask questions, whatever.
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