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 →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.
Read more →Whoever said “walk before you run” never spent much time with toddlers. Sure, toddlers start off trying to figure out balance and hanging on to coffee tables and couches in order to stay upright. But every last one of the ones I’ve met, once they let go
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