See you next week!
Read more →Holidays are part of every human culture we currently know about, going back as far as we have records. There are a few that are nearly universal – planting and harvest festivals, solstices, equinoxes. Unsurprisingly, these tend to be based around natural cycles of the sun or
Read more →Before you begin, I just want to mention that I will be taking the week off between Christmas and New Years. I’m not planning to move the next Open Mic day, so it will be in six weeks as usual. That’s holidays for you…
Read more →A long time ago, a would-be writer told me in all seriousness that the important things in writing were the action and the dialog. Things like description and setting were just window-dressing, things that were only important to “literary readers.” In the intervening years, visual media have
Read more →I recently read a story in which the writer had two villains whose respective plotlines had very different endings. One villain was heading for an action climax with a dramatic set-piece battle scene; the other was heading for an emotional confrontation ending in the revelation of all
Read more →Description in stories is fractal. No matter what the writer chooses to describe, there’s another level available if they want it. Describe a room: walls, floor, ceiling, furnishings. Describe the walls – stone or plaster, painted or natural, square or circular or irregular, empty or covered with
Read more →“How did you decide what viewpoint to use for your first novel?” I was more than a little bemused by the question, because that is one of many supposedly vital writing decisions that I don’t remember making, let alone angsting over the way the questioner obviously was.
Read more →Every time a writer sits down to write a story, they face a bunch of different demands and expectations from several different directions. A writer who is aware of these demands and where they’re coming from can usually make better conscious adjustments when the various demands and
Read more →It is, fortunately, time for another Open Mic! Speak amongst yourselves while I try to get my router fixed before it is time to post next week.
Read more →The idea that every character must have a goal and a motivation, not only for the overall story/plot but for each and every scene in that story, has always been something that I have had trouble with. That is, until I realized that my difficulty was due
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