Points of Departure is now for sale! As you can see, we have made the leap to a new host for the web site. There are still a few problems shaking out, so new posts may suffer from odd timing for a few weeks, but I am
Read more →Before I begin, let me just mention that Points of Departure, the anthology of Liavek stories Pamela Dean and I did, is going live on May 12, and we just got a very nice starred review http://www.publishersweekly.com/978-1-62681-555-1 at the Publisher’s Weekly website. This is a very big
Read more →A couple of years ago, I was at a seminar on getting organized (I am a sucker for that kind of thing), and the presenter asked for examples of our current projects-in-process. Naturally, the example I came up with was the book I was working on at
Read more →A few more words about plot before I move on to something else for a while: First off, dozens of people besides Heinlein have come up with different sets of basic plots; he’s not the last word on the subject. Most of them have a lot more
Read more →The reason I started the last post with a bunch of examples of what plot is not was twofold: first, as I said, lots of people’s plot-problems seem to happen because they are starting from something that sort of looks like a plot, but actually isn’t one,
Read more →One of the things that seems to confuse a lot of people about plot, especially at the start of a story, is that they’re misidentifying what they have to hand, what they want to do, and how to get from one to another. What they have is
Read more →The elbow is not completely healed, but it is much better. I’m still not allowed to lift anything heavier than a coffee cup, but typing isn’t about lifting, so that’s all right. However, I’m planning to ease back into things – I’m going to be posting once
Read more →One final word about what’s at stake: the real stakes, the thing that is of greatest ultimate importance to the main character, not only are not necessarily connected to the perceived stakes, they don’t have anything whatever to do with the type of story you are writing.
Read more →Lots of writers have a problem figuring out what the actual stakes are (as opposed to the perceived stakes). Quick review: the actual stakes are what’s really at stake for the character; the perceived stakes are what the character currently thinks is at stake. One reason for
Read more →OK it looks like I’m going to do a series of posts on plot. Let’s start with the stakes. Objectively speaking, the stakes are the thing that is to be lost or gained, depending on how things go. The stakes are crucial; if they don’t matter, the
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