The traditional plot shape I discussed last time is vaguely triangular; it starts at a beginning, tension rises as the protagonist faces and overcomes (or doesn’t) a series of obstacles, until things reach a peak at the climax or turning point; after that, it’s all downhill until
Read more →When I was in school, back in the Jurassic, I was taught the basic plot structure and its variations: beginning, rising action, climax or turning point, falling action. The chart that went along with it looked something like this: For years and years, I thought this was
Read more →You are standing in a hallway at nine in the morning, facing a dining room/kitchen to the south. To the west are stairs up. To the north is an office. Your head feels rather fuzzy. >Go north You are standing in a cluttered office, full of paper,
Read more →Anyone who hangs out with professional writers for very long will eventually hear one of them say “I couldn’t get away with that in a novel” or “If I put that in a story, nobody would believe it,” and they’ll probably hear it sooner rather than later.
Read more →The first time I heard an editor talk about character-based plotting, it made me think I was doing something wrong. (This was around 25 years ago, mind.) “Your characters have to want something, and want it badly,” he said. “That’s where you start. All the best plots
Read more →For a variety of reasons, I’ve been rereading a couple of different series recently, even though I gave up on both of them somewhere between book 8 and book 12. One was a mystery series, the other science fiction…but both of them had similar problems. When I
Read more →One of several things I discovered this week is that when you have 31 hours of driving (spit over several days), a convention gig, and most especially a bunch of editorial revisions to do on a collection of blog posts, remembering that you also have to write
Read more →One of the first decisions writers have to make, once they’ve actually sold a manuscript, is what name to write under. There are a lot of possible considerations here, so let’s start with your actual name. My current full name is Patricia Collins Wrede; I could have
Read more →First, the exciting news (exciting for me, anyway): I have just signed the contract to do a collection of these blog posts (selected, edited, and occasionally augmented) on writing for Diversion Books. It should be coming out in December as an e-book with a hard-copy option (so
Read more →One of the most common questions I get, right up there with “Where do you get your ideas?” and “How can I get published?”, is “How do you deal with writer’s block?” Sometimes it gets asked plaintively; sometimes with a note of desperation. Once in a great
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