Description is usually considered as a part of worldbuilding. This makes sense, because everything in a story is part of the story-world (whether that’s Alpha Centauri Three, modern-day Beijing, or a tiny prehistoric fishing village), and every part of the story-world tells the reader more about what
Read more →Right from the start, I’ve tended to write stories that have lots of characters. Everybody seems to have their sisters and their cousins and their aunts…and children, parents, brothers, uncles, and grandparents and friends, all of whom have friends and family of their own. I also often
Read more →One of the most common bits of writing advice is variously phrased as “Make the reader fall in love with your characters,” “Make your characters likeable,” “Make your characters sympathetic,” and, most generally, “Make the reader care about your characters.” There are three problems with this advice.
Read more →Basically, I’m experiencing three different kinds of Stuck with the three main stories I’m working on.—E. Beck Summary of Stuckness: Stuck because you don’t want to work on this story right now. Stuck because there’s a major time jump/transition to get over. Stuck because you are unsure
Read more →Basically, I’m experiencing three different kinds of Stuck with the three main stories I’m working on.—E. Beck Summarizing the three types you described in last week’s comments: Stuck because you don’t want to work on this story right now. Stuck because there’s a major time jump/transition to
Read more →Back when I still had a day job, I was a financial analyst. It is therefore really unsurprising that I enjoy looking at writing systems that are very structured and involve analyzing stories to pick out what works or doesn’t work. There are, however, a couple of
Read more →It feels as if I just did this yesterday, but my calendar says it is time for another open mic!
Read more →Probably the second most common question established writers get is “How do you find time to write?” If the writer is known to be a full-time writer, it’s usually phrased as “When you had a day job, how did you…” but it’s still the same question. These
Read more →There’s a lot of emphasis these days on prewriting—that is, all the stuff you need to do before you sit down and actually start Chapter One. It is a comforting thing for many writers, because it gives people a plausible method to follow. Do this, decide that,
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