A new year means a new beginning for many people, and it presents an irresistible opportunity for me to talk about beginning a story, even if most of you are probably in the middle of something at the moment. The first question that comes to mind is
Read more →It’s here! The Dark Lord’s Daughter is officially out. I’m excited and anxious and hopeful and lots of other things, which will probably last a couple of weeks until I have some idea how it’s doing. Meantime, I have a blog post to give you. This week
Read more →In many ways, stories are a balancing act, and the balance point for every story depends on exactly what the author is juggling and how much of whatever-it-is they have to keep in the air. A guy riding a unicycle is a balancing act, but so is
Read more →As I’ve said before, dialog isn’t a transcript of the way people talk. It’s a stripped-down model that takes out the majority of verbal pause-fillers that don’t add meaning most of the time, such as “um,” “er,” “you know,” “like,” “uh,” “well,” etc. The catch is that
Read more →Most writers get something “for free” – some part of writing that they don’t have to work at to get it to an acceptable level. Sometimes it’s something general: plot development, emotionally complex characterization, solid background, an intuitive grasp of story structure. Sometimes it’s something more narrowly
Read more →There’s a scene in the Great Muppet Caper in which Lady Holiday, while interviewing Miss Piggy for a receptionist job, tells her a lot of personal information about her family relationships and the valuable jewelry (the Baseball Diamond…) she is going to put on display. When Miss
Read more →“How did you decide what viewpoint to use for your first novel?” I was more than a little bemused by the question, because that is one of many supposedly vital writing decisions that I don’t remember making, let alone angsting over the way the questioner obviously was.
Read more →One of my best friends is in need of some writing advice. She says: “I have vague ideas, or scenes, or a few lines of dialogue about a given idea, which I try to make notes of as they come. But I don’t know how or have
Read more →A lot of story analysis and critique starts by focusing on macro-level aspects of storytelling: characterization, narrative, worldbuilding, plot, and the ways one develops or reveals these things over the course of a novel. Ultimately, though, how one presents characterization, growth, personality, action, worldbuilding, plot, and everything
Read more →“Getting an idea” is a bit like having a bowl full of flour. You can stir in some sugar and salt and baking powder and spices, and you still have a bowl of white powder that doesn’t stick together to make anything. You can cut in a
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