I’ve spent the past month or so fiddling with the synopsis for the sequel to The Dark Lord’s Daughter (which I still don’t have a publication date for, but it will probably be at least a year and a half). Writing a new book is always a
Read more →Prophecies seem to have become a staple of fantasy literature. Most of them are either self-fulfilling prophecies, where the characters’ attempts to circumvent the prophecy are what makes it come true, or they are riddles – symbolic language or plays on words that are puzzles for the
Read more →First, a public service announcement: the Worldshaper’s podcast which did an interview with me a few months back is running a Kickstarter to fund an anthology of short fiction by authors they’ve interviewed. The URL is https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/edwardwillett/shapers-of-worlds-volume-ii The authors involved will be people who were interviewed in
Read more →“No battle plan survives contact with the enemy.” – Helmuth von Moltk People in general do not do things completely at random. There may not be much conscious, deliberate planning involved in stumbling out of bed in the morning and getting the coffee or tea started, but
Read more →This is a continuation of the pre-open-mic post on choreography. Last time, I was talking mostly about the macro level – the order things happen in the overall story. This week, I’m going to talk more about the scene level. Choreographing a scene starts with the things
Read more →Today is your regularly scheduled Open Mic chat! Next week, I’ll talk more about ordering events in scenes.
Read more →Choreography is defined as “the art or practice of designing sequences of movements of physical bodies (or their depictions) in which motion, form, or both are specified.” It is most often applied to dance, but the term gets used for pretty much anything that involves a need
Read more →What makes a book great? Having read a lot of articles on the subject, I can say three things with considerably certainty: While there is some agreement about what books are great, there is very little agreement about why they are great. When asked what makes a
Read more →One way and another, a lot of pixels get used talking about making “well-rounded” or complex characters. I put “well-rounded” in scare quotes because it always makes me think of the advice I got in high school about being well-rounded – take many kinds of classes, try
Read more →“Getting an idea” is a bit like having a bowl full of flour. You can stir in some sugar and salt and baking powder and spices, and you still have a bowl of white powder that doesn’t stick together to make anything. You can cut in a
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