The general consensus seemed to be that people wanted my stream-of-consciousness scene-developing example, so you’ll get that next week. In the meantime, here’s the technical post on moving characters around, that got interrupted because I can’t remember my own schedule for Open Mic days… Suggestion box: Could
Read more →So in my enthusiasm for answering questions, I appear to have forgotten that last week was supposed to be an Open Mic week. Here it is, late… And apropos of questions, I was wondering if people would be interested in a post taking a real-life bit of
Read more →Suggestion box: Could we have a post on moving characters around in a scene?…I struggle with how much detail to include on movement and on background. I don’t remember who described a scene as having naked characters sitting on clouds, but that’s about where many of mine
Read more →Suggestion-box requests: (1) Dialog, in particular mixing stage business with dialog. It’s been a while since I’ve done a post on dialog, and I have a request for one, so here ‘tis. So-called “stage business” in fiction follows the theater definition; it’s “an incidental action, such as
Read more →I am sorry to have to let everyone know that Dorothy Heydt, a good friend and one of our regular author-contributors in the comments, has passed away. I don’t have much in the way of details, but Seanan McGuire, who is a close friend of the family,
Read more →I got quite a few requests in the last Open Mic, and I’m going to start working through them, beginning with this: Note the problem is not character story lacking, but putting together a single coherent plot that doesn’t consist of a character’s entire life story. I
Read more →Most writers get something “for free” – some part of writing that they don’t have to work at to get it to an acceptable level. Sometimes it’s something general: plot development, emotionally complex characterization, solid background, an intuitive grasp of story structure. Sometimes it’s something more narrowly
Read more →Human beings are hardwired to notice what’s wrong. Historically, it was a lot more important to spot the tiger hiding in the bushes than it was to pick out the antelope grazing down the hill, because the tiger was a more immediate threat. Missing the antelope meant
Read more →When Dorothy asked about reposting my Hat Lecture, I realized that I hadn’t done an updated version since 2011. So here is a revised version (or you can just go read the original one, if you’d rather). The original Hat Lecture focused on the fact that a
Read more →Time for another Open Mic! My news: I have a new roof! Which is great for not having water leak into my library, but not so great for pounding on the roof, also hard on the bank account. How is everyone else?
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