Characterization comes in two parts—physical and personality, or, if you prefer, external and internal. This complicates all the basic telling/showing decisions, which are complicated even more by what the story’s viewpoint is. Let’s start with the physical/external, because it’s a lot like the description of places I
Read more →Another question: I can do my own voice, or a child’s voice. That’s it. I have no idea how to figure out how another character would speak, especially someone who has a big speaking part. How do you improve at this? Is there a way to research
Read more →A long time ago, I attended a workshop in which the presenter asked us to write a one-page description of our ideal day. I couldn’t do it. I don’t have one “ideal” day that I’d be happy to repeat over and over—no matter how good a day
Read more →Happy almost-Halloween! For those of you who are going to be in Minneapolis between January 17 and February 2, 2025, I have an announcement—The Phoenix Theater (https://www.phoenixtheatermpls.org/) here is doing a production of Dealing with Dragons during that time. Tickets available at the link above. I love
Read more →There’s a recurring writing argument that revolves around which type(s) of viewpoint are “too easy” or “too hard” or problematic in some other way, such that writers (especially beginners, but when you look a little closer, it sounds a lot like “all writers”) should be discouraged from
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 →Found this in a batch of older questions: When one conveys descriptions, actions, or background information through dialogue, does it count as showing or telling? The short answer is, the writer is “showing” two characters in conversation. People in conversations are of course “telling” each other things;
Read more →The general consensus seemed to be that people wanted my stream-of-consciousness scene-developing example, so you’ll get that next week. In the meantime, here’s the technical post on moving characters around, that got interrupted because I can’t remember my own schedule for Open Mic days… Suggestion box: Could
Read more →Holidays are part of every human culture we currently know about, going back as far as we have records. There are a few that are nearly universal – planting and harvest festivals, solstices, equinoxes. Unsurprisingly, these tend to be based around natural cycles of the sun or
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