There’s an analogy that’s been around for a long time – I’ve been using it myself for years – comparing writing a novel to a long-distance road trip, usually at night. The comparison goes, in the car, you can only see as far as the headlights light
Read more →One of the supposed truisms of writing is that a good plot must have conflict. And while this is, in fact, true, I’ve seen it misinterpreted so many times that I thought I’d talk about it a little. The problem always seems to come in the definition
Read more →I’ve talked more than once about the Big Three – plot, characterization, and setting. They started off as the earliest writing advice I recall getting (and I wish I could remember the name of the writer who told me that, so I could credit him properly), as
Read more →Lately, I’ve been getting anxious queries from a lot of close friends, who know a) exactly when my book deadline is, b) just how many other desperately important things I have going on to distract me from writing, and c) how many plot threads I still have
Read more →Fanfiction is a fascinating phenomenon. Yes, yes, I know that there’s still a huge argument going on between the people who think it’s all right to do and the people who consider it illegal, unethical, and unprofessional, but I think it’s a rather silly argument, on the
Read more →Ms. Wrede, do you use a plot skeleton? asked the earnest student. How do you apply it to your work? I sat there for a minute, completely slumguzzled. Because the question was coming from such an alien perspective that it took me a while to come up
Read more →An awful lot of the techniques that get used in fiction have applications in nonfiction as well. They’re not necessary in nonfiction, but they can add a lot of appeal, interest, and readability, among other things. One of the less obvious candidates for this sort of usefulness
Read more →Back in high school, I had a marvelous history teacher who made a point of going into more than memorizing dates and names and places. One of the key things I took away from that class was the concept of necessary and sufficient causes, and the difference
Read more →I have several friends (some professional writers, some not) who consider themselves conflict-averse. Faced with the near-universal insistence on conflict as the primary factor in plotting, they either hunch down, grumbling, and attempt to provide enough murders, fights, and battles to fill this presumed need, or they
Read more →Sooner or later, most writers go through a period of worrying that their work is full of clichés. Some folks take this to ridiculous extremes; one person I ran into was worried about their heroine’s hair color, because it just seemed clichéd to have her be blonde,
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