Ever since the invention of the assembly line, one of the fundamental assumptions of our culture has been that the most effective way of getting something done is to break the job down into small pieces or steps that get you from where you are to where
Read more →“What are the three worst or best bits of writing advice you’ve ever been given?” Somebody asked me that a while back, and it took me a while to come up with a reasonable answer, because at least one of them was perfectly horrible advice for me…but
Read more →I keep running into the problem of “the main characters seem to be the only people in the setting.” Might I beg a post on how to do crowd scenes (or scenes in general) where there are lots of people in the background? –Question from Deep Lurker
Read more →Lurker, I’ll get to your crowd post next. Every so often, I am reminded that not everyone lives in Minnesota. I was reminded of this forcibly a few years back at a fabulous Minicon panel at which five editors graciously consented to, in essence, read slush for
Read more →There are two basic problems with controlling a mob of characters: juggling all their individual stories throughout a book, and juggling their conversations when all of them are in the same place and trying to talk at the same time. The simplest solution to both problems is,
Read more →Apparently there’s some interest in techniques for crowd control, so I’ll address that next post. In this one, I want to continue talking about characters’ voices, and ways of making them different. First, a couple of examples of what I mean by “characters who have radically different
Read more →Characters, like people, are different from each other. They are different ages and genders; they come from different countries and levels of society; sometimes they even speak different languages, at least as their native tongues. This being so, they should by rights sound different from one another.
Read more →“I only need one gun, but it has to be the right gun.” – Lois Bujold Very few ideas are perfect on arrival. Few non-writers recognize this, and almost none of them realize that the process of correcting them often begins before a word of a story
Read more →I have this new project, which I have been wrestling with for a couple of months now. Mostly pleasant wrestling, as there are a lot of elements that please me. The problem is, I couldn’t get the thing started. This is extremely unusual for me, but it
Read more →There are a lot of jobs in the world, but for the majority of them, you know what you’re in for. You’re making something, or moving it around, or keeping track of it, or trading it. Even upper-level managers have a pretty fair idea what their job
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