One of the first things I ever learned to hate about writing was writing council scenes. One character on stage had things to do; two characters on stage could talk to each other; three could talk and interrupt and disagree. But with every character after that who
Read more →“So how can you stand being edited?” is a question that’s been coming up at conventions lately. The subtext usually assumes that all editors are a) idiots and/or b) out to ruin everyone’s brilliant manuscripts, and that they must therefore be fought off with every bit of
Read more →“How do you write with a day job/kids/other responsibilities?” is a question that doesn’t have an easy, one-size-fits-all answer, because, like so many other aspects of the writing process, exactly what works depends on the particular writer. But there are a few principles that can be applied.
Read more →Worldbuilding is one of those basic skills that’s important for all writers, but vital for those of us who write in totally imaginary science fictional or fantasy worlds. There are two basic approaches, the soap bubble and the iceberg. For the iceberg worldbuilders, there’s a whole lot
Read more →Spring is always a busy time for YA authors and would-be authors. Teachers are trying to come up with ways of keeping middle-grade and younger students interested when the weather is turning nice, so they have students write to their favorite authors, and if they can swing
Read more →Years ago, I had a chance to talk to a bunch of high school English teachers about writing, and one of the first things they asked was what my high school teachers had done to inspire me to write. I had to honestly tell them “Nothing,” because
Read more →One of the questions everybody seems to ask writers – right after “Where do you get your ideas?” – is “Do you have a time of day when you write?” I can’t figure out whether they want me to say “yes,” hoping that writing is the same
Read more →A lot of my friends have trouble writing action scenes. Not on the sentence-by-sentence level – they know all the tricks and tips – but on a more general level. They know that their first-person viewpoint character is only going to have a close-up, confused picture of
Read more →Infrastructure is all that everyday stuff we take for granted, from roads and bridges to garbage collection and cell phones. It’s one of the things that allows societies to function smoothly, if they want to. It’s vitally important…and it’s also vastly boring. Consequently, writers tend not to
Read more →Earlier this week, Minnesota Public Radio replayed an interview with novelist Richard Ford, and some of his comments (around 23 minutes into the broadcast) got me thinking about landscape. First off, landscape isn’t the same as setting. They overlap, of course, but one can tell an urban
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