Every time I talk to a new group of would-be writers, one of the inevitable questions is “How do you find time to write?” There is no good answer to this question, because there is never enough time to do everything—the things one must do (eat, sleep,
Read more →It’s another open mic/mike week! Feel free to continue any discussions from previous posts, ask for better explanations or clarification, come up with whole new questions, or just catch everyone up on your latest news. I’m trying to get the house and cats set up so I
Read more →So I had half my playing around with structure post done for this week, and then Kevin said this: “Pat, do you think a preset structure likely makes a story more predictable, or are structure and predictability unrelated?” There are a couple of things to consider here.
Read more →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
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