Back to basics

Every skill, including writing, starts with a bunch of things that are really basic. If you want to be a carpenter, you learn to hammer nails and saw wood; if you want to be a writer, you learn how to write clear, coherent sentences. After a while

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Experimenting early

Over the past few months I’ve had a number of writing questions that superficially are all very different, but that, if you back off a bit and look at them, boil down to “Ms. Wrede, why do people keep telling me that I can’t/shouldn’t use XYZ non-standard

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Getting it in

There are three basic ways to get multiple plot points and payoffs into a story: you can do it on purpose in the first draft, you can do it by accident in the first draft, or you can do it in the rewrite. Putting in plot points

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Descriptive details

When I was in grade school, one of the first writing assignments we got was to write a paragraph describing something, usually a single object. As I progressed in school, the assignments increased in length and complexity, from a single object to a room, from a room

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Narrative drive and Harry Potter

  Narrative drive is the thing about a story that makes it a compulsive read. It what creates the just-one-more-page/scene/chapter syndrome, the I-stayed-up-til-three-a.m.-to-finish condition, the thing that makes certain series like eating potato chips. And it has absolutely nothing to do with action, and very little to

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Mostly About Time

Everybody gets 24 hours per day, 7 days per week. That’s 168 hours, total. Nobody gets any more; nobody gets any less. Yet somehow one of the first things that gets asked when I talk to a bunch of would-be writers is “How do you make time

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Making it up in the rewrite

Rewriting is inevitable. Most of us are well aware that our manuscripts are not perfect the first time around. Many of us depend on beta readers and critique groups and various other pre-submission review-and-refurbish processes to whip our rough drafts into shape. Those who for one reason

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Making it up in the middle

No writer I know can get through an entire novel without stopping at some point to make up more stuff, not even the most organized and linear of planners. The pantsers who make it up as they go along are a whole different kettle of fish, but

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