“You do not rise to the level of your goals. You fall to the level of your systems.” – James Clear, Atomic Habits I’ve had several requests to talk about systems for writing fiction. The trouble is that a good, workable system is particular, even when it’s
Read more →Writing a novel is a balancing act. It starts with the Big Three (characterization, setting/world-building, plot). Each of those usually has the potential to expand exponentially in several different directions at once. At the start (and sometimes all the way through the middle), it seems as if
Read more →The holiday season is always a bit tricky when it comes to blog posts. I generally take the week off between Christmas and New Years, so next week will be another Open Mic, available for whatever people want to discuss (or just for exchanging holiday wishes). I’ll
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 →Every so often, I get asked about finding beta readers. This is my take: Step 1: Decide what you want from a beta reader. Some writers want (and need) encouragement—the proverbial “five pages of closely reasoned praise.” Other writers want something specific; they want to know if
Read more →I think it was in fifth grade that I learned my first important principle of description, which a number of commenters on last week’s post mentioned—namely, to make use of all five senses, not just sight. Poul Anderson said once that he went over every page 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 →Fairy tale retellings are a perennially popular both among readers and among writers. Since I’ve written a couple, I occasionally get questions or comments about writing them. The most common one comes from people who ask “How do you do that?” in a rather awestruck tone. I
Read more →… I bog down in considerations of what the readers need to know, and if don’t put it right at the beginning then when, and how many flashbacks can one novel support? Part two of the now-three-part answer to this, i.e. “There are a lot of ways
Read more →Happy 2023, everybody! It’s a new year, and this is when nearly everybody (including me) takes at least a few minutes to think about what they want to get done in the coming year. “Write a book” is a perennial favorite. So I thought I’d try to
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