Last week I got into another one of those discussions with a would-be writer who was convinced that before he ever sat down to write, he had to have the perfect idea – one with depth and resonance, something he found personally meaningful and inspiring, and above
Read more →One of the things it took me a while to get a handle on was giving my characters different speech patterns, depending on both their personalities and their backgrounds. For my first couple of books, I was too busy juggling all the other stuff – background, plot,
Read more →The process of revising effectively tends to vary from writer to writer just as the first-draft writing process varies, and it’s not necessarily connected to the way one writes your first drafts. In fact, often (though not always) the revisions process seems to need to be the
Read more →One of the things that makes writing difficult for a lot of folks is the notion that they have to do everything at once, on the first try. They’re sure their first draft has to look pretty much like an actual story – maybe it needs some
Read more →Before we get to the post, I feel obliged to mention that we’re doing some more blog maintenance tomorrow – might as well get it over with as soon/much as possible – so there may possibly be another short outage. We’re expecting this bit to go smoothly,
Read more →So Minicon was last weekend, and in among seeing lots of friends (and managing to miss seeing far too many others) there was the usual crop of questions – what are you going to write next, where do you get your ideas, etc. Including one poor fellow
Read more →Ask a writer what it is they want to do with their story, and something like eight out of ten will start by giving you a description of the plot. Ask again, push a little harder, and 99% of them will eventually come up with “I want
Read more →Families are often hard to deal with, even if you love them. This is true in real life, but it’s even more true in fiction, especially in science fiction and fantasy. A large part of the problem is that including the hero/heroine’s family in the story means
Read more →A while back, I had an inquiry from a reader regarding research, specifically asking how I went about researching historical slang and stage magic. I decided I’d answer it here instead of in email, because while the specific subjects are fairly easy to address, there are some
Read more →There is really nothing like a good villain. From Blackie Duquesne to Darth Vader, they’re often the most striking and memorable characters in a story. A lot of the professional writers I know find villains a lot more fun and interesting to write about than heroes; several
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