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 →Every time I talk to a new group of would-be writers, one of the inevitable questions is “How do you find time to write?” There is no good answer to this question, because there is never enough time to do everything—the things one must do (eat, sleep,
Read more →This is the post about different types of climaxes that I mentioned last week. It’s closely related to reverse planning—or any kind of story planning, really—because how you plan or outline a story (if you work that way) depends a lot on what kind of climax you
Read more →This is Part II of me trying to answer LM’s query, specifically the part about backward planning—that is, starting with a climax scene and working out the plot backwards from that. I had a whole other post written, then realized that I had gotten distracted talking about
Read more →LM requested a post on “speeding up a novel planning process re: structure, etc.” This one is probably going to be another series, because I have a lot to chew on here, including backwards planning and gardening/explorer planning vs. the more commonly advised three-act-structure planning. First off,
Read more →Deep Lurker’s request was second, for a post “on ways to depict events spread over several months.” If someone has been writing stories that take place over a couple of days or weeks, being faced with a story that takes place over a year or more can
Read more →Edited to reformat for readability, per Deep Lurker’s suggestion. This is my version of how-I-develop-it-into-a-scene when I’m having particular trouble. In this case, I started with a conversation “sketch draft” with minimal movement. There are four characters present: Archie, the 15-year-old POV; Del, aged 10; and Harkawn
Read more →When Dorothy asked about reposting my Hat Lecture, I realized that I hadn’t done an updated version since 2011. So here is a revised version (or you can just go read the original one, if you’d rather). The original Hat Lecture focused on the fact that a
Read more →This is the time of year when a lot of high school students are thinking about college, and as a consequence, I’ve had several earnest requests for information about the best places to go to school, what to major in, etc. Since I usually figure that what
Read more →Back in the day, on Usenet, I had a little lecture that I posted periodically, whenever too many folks seemed to be bemoaning the horribleness of the submission process so much that they were losing sight of the actual job of submitting. (Make no mistake; the submission
Read more →
