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
Read more →Understanding how stories work improves one’s ability to put them together better. What many people don’t get is that “understanding” can be intuitive as well as—or instead of—analytical/intellectual. Both ways of understanding are subject to error. The “gut feel” that X is the right thing to do
Read more →One of the things I keep coming back to is the fact that writing, especially writing for a living, is a business. It doesn’t have to be—for instance, people who write fanfiction for free don’t have to worry about that part. But anyone who gets paid for
Read more →And it is time again for an Open Mic post, which is extraordinarily convenient as I have to work on the copy-edit for “The Dark Lord’s Daughter” this week! Have fun…
Read more →Back in high school, I took a semester of journalism. The teacher focused hard on the “5 W’s and an H”—Who, What, When, Where, Why and How—and also on the structure of a news story (most important stuff in the first paragraph, steady increase in interesting-but-less-important details
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