Beats and plot points aren’t the same thing, though they sometimes sound as if they ought to be. Basically, plot points are about content; beats are about rhythm. Beats make a pattern; plot points make a causal chain. They support and depend on each other, but they’re
Read more →Every story needs to open with a hook, or so says conventional writing wisdom. Conventional writing wisdom, unfortunately, seldom goes on to address the obvious question: Just what is a hook, anyway? And how do you write one? There are three things everybody seems to agree upon
Read more →The other day, somebody asked me what the best and worst writing advice I’d ever gotten was. The best was easy: “Learn to type.” My mother was the first to give me that particular bit of writing advice, though I’ve seen it since coming from a variety
Read more →The other day somebody asked me what a plot point was, and I had to stop and think about it. As usual, when I have to stop and think about anything writing-related, I end up doing a blog post to clarify my thinking. “Plot points” are one
Read more →As near as I can tell, “prewriting” is a trendy catch-all term for “everything a writer does before they actually sit down and start writing the story.” Even that definition is a little dicey, given how many writers go through a stage where they’re writing down bits
Read more →It’s been a while since I’ve talked about viewpoint, so I think I’ll devote this post to it, and maybe a few more if people seem interested. Viewpoint is one of those areas of writing where there seems to be a tremendous amount of confusion. A lot
Read more →One of the bits of advice that is often given to would-be writers is “Use strong verbs.” Apart from my usual allergy to rules and generalizations, one of the things that bothers me about this is that I’ve seldom seen anyone try to explain what it means,
Read more →For some reason, I feel like talking about query letters again, possibly because I’ve recently been the recipient of a couple of queries that can only be described as dreadful. I begin with a couple of definitions: A query letter is a one-page business letter that presents
Read more →Young adult fiction almost always features a protagonist who is a teenager or young adult for most of the story or series. This means that one of the largest problems YA authors face is the “Parent Problem,” that is, the problem of how to get their protagonists
Read more →There are other kinds of worldbuilding besides the deep-background variety I was talking about last post, to wit, the immediate-background sort and the in-story sort. The immediate-background worldbuilding, like deep worldbuilding, is stuff that not everyone needs to do in advance. It’s very similar to the deep-worldbuilding
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