Found this in a batch of older questions: When one conveys descriptions, actions, or background information through dialogue, does it count as showing or telling? The short answer is, the writer is “showing” two characters in conversation. People in conversations are of course “telling” each other things;
Read more →I’m out of questions for the time being, so we’re back to my random musings on writing in general. Back when I was a beginning writer, I had a horror of “wasting writing time” by writing stuff that wasn’t actual pay copy. If it wasn’t intended to
Read more →As for requests: Elevator pitches, are there different varieties? (Because I’ve heard them described as both one-sentence set-up only, and as three-sentence complete but extremely abridged plot summaries.) –Deep Lurker My first reaction is that you’re over-thinking this. An elevator pitch doesn’t have rules or even a
Read more →When you have a weird question (e.g. “If someone gained encyclopaedic knowledge of an advanced civilization, how could they improve technology in a medieval fantasy world?”), how do you research it? .–Alpakka Researching for fiction depends on what the writer needs to know. That sounds really obvious,
Read more →Will you do a post on how to handle subplots, specifically in a single-viewpoint story? I am relatively new to writing longer fiction and have never dealt with them before. –E. Beck My first reaction is that if you are having trouble with subplots, begin by ignoring
Read more →Learning to describe things! … in trying not to overwhelm my readers with too much information because worldbuilding, I’ve been giving way too little re: scene setting. –LN Looks like I have a bunch of questions, which is great—it means I don’t have to think up as
Read more →Chat amongst yourselves–what are your current WIPs, problems, brilliant new ideas, plans for Halloween, whatever! And ask if there’s anything you’d like a blog post on. Or anything you’re sick of hearing me rant about…
Read more →It has recently occurred to me that the real problem with writing a novel—or with giving advice about writing a novel—is that writing a novel is a lot like inventing cold fusion. No one in the world has ever invented cold fusion. People have invented a lot
Read more →Wow, people in comments have already covered a lot of what I was going to say about villains in this one. I still have a few things to add, though… Starting with: What kind of villain suits your story? If you’re writing The Lord of the Rings,
Read more →Look at any book or blog of fiction-writing advice, and you will most likely find a bunch of statements about the desirability of complex, well-rounded characters. Some give you twenty-page questionnaires to fill out in advance of writing, as if listing a character’s flaws and childhood traumas
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