Name it…what?

If people would ask writers where they get their titles, instead of where they get their ideas, they’d probably get a lot more interesting answers much of the time. In my experience, it’s really difficult for most writers to articulate exactly where they got the idea for

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Making soup

It’s been a little over a year since my mother died, and one of the things I inherited from her was her collection of cookbooks. It’s quite a collection, too. When Mom ran out of space on the kitchen cookbook shelf, she just started putting them elsewhere. I’ve taken three

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The jigsaw puzzle analogy

I keep running across people who think that there is One Right Way to write a story, and who tie themselves in knots trying to force themselves to write “the right way” when it doesn’t suit their particular mental processes. Somewhere, somehow, they’ve gotten convinced (usually because some

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Looking backward I

There are two important things to know about flashbacks: how to do them, and when to do them. Both things can be trickier to figure out than they look. First, a definition: as far as I’m concerned, flashbacks are a way of conveying some background/backstory information as if it

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Fantasy vs. Reality

Every so often, I get asked what the difference is between writing fantasy and writing realistic fiction. It’s a pretty good question, though since I’ve never written anything that wasn’t science fiction or fantasy, I’m not sure why anyone expects me to know. (Of course, I have

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