Fiction is an illusion. It’s a made-up tale of something that never happened…and it’s the author’s job to get the reader to accept that illusion for the length of the story, however long the story is. This basic unifying principle tends to get lost a lot, because
Read more →Writing processes are interesting things, not least because there are so many different kinds. Mine is particularly odd, in that I am neither a sit-down-and-wing-it writer, nor am I a plan-in-advance-and-stick-to-the-plan writer. I’m smack in the middle of the range, a plan-in-advance-and-then-periodically-throw-away-the-plan writer. The reason why I
Read more →First off, it has been brought to my attention (thanks, John!) that I need to tell my regular readers that The Far West is now out and available in hardcover. The e-book will be out in October, they tell me. On to the post. Back in the
Read more →First, a happy dance: NPR just put out a list of 100 Best Ever Teen Reads, and guess what ended up at #84? I’m scunnered. Happy, but scunnered. It’s a fabulous reading list; check it out. And thanks to anybody out there who nominated or voted for
Read more →“There are three rules for writing a novel. Unfortunately, no one knows what they are.” -W. Somerset Maugham I’ve had at least four questions from people in the last week or two about that hoary old piece of advice “show, don’t tell.” So even though I just
Read more →…“and what is the use of a book,” thought Alice, “without pictures or conversations?” -Lewis Carroll, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland Dialog occupies an odd place on the list of fundamental fiction-writing skills. It’s a component of nearly all fiction, but it’s not absolutely necessary (Hatchet and My
Read more →“subplot – a secondary sequence of actions in a dramatic or narrative work, usually involving characters of lesser importance (and often of lower social status).” – The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Literary Terms Subplots are one of the largest and most obvious differences between short stories and
Read more →I apologize for being a bit late with this today. Revising a first draft is one of those things that sounds as if it’s easy to talk about until you try…and then once you start digging into it, you start wondering how it’s even possible to do,
Read more →Back when I was writing my first novel, I got somewhere in the middle and realized I needed to write a battle scene. Not just a bar brawl or a fight between six of the good guys and ten or twelve bad guys; an actual clash of
Read more →One of the many things nobody warned me about when I was getting started was all the self-proclaimed “experts” who would show up and start giving me advice about my writing career, whether I wanted it from them or not. By and large, these are not people
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