There are three basic ways to get multiple plot points and payoffs into a story: you can do it on purpose in the first draft, you can do it by accident in the first draft, or you can do it in the rewrite. Putting in plot points
Read more →No writer I know can get through an entire novel without stopping at some point to make up more stuff, not even the most organized and linear of planners. The pantsers who make it up as they go along are a whole different kettle of fish, but
Read more →Looking at the story development process the way I have been in these last few posts makes it seem logical and straightforward, but that’s only because I was looking at one angle at a time. In actual fact, when one is making stuff up for a real
Read more →Starting with a setting, rather than with a plot or characters, is a lot more common than many non-writers think. This is because “setting” as used by writers encompasses a whole lot more than simply the physical environment. Yes, you will occasionally hear a writer say “I
Read more →Every writer I know has a lot of trouble with some part of the making-up process. The most common difficulties seem to be with plot, or with characters…and quite often, the people who find making up characters “the easy part” have horrible difficulties with plot, and vice
Read more →Back in July, I talked about Messing Around With Post-Its when I was three chapter into the novel, and came up with a plan for the next two or three chapters. This is an update on how that worked, and why. As a refresher, I had arranged
Read more →“How do you manage your subplots?” somebody asked me a while back. “How do you decide when and where to put in a subplot scene, and how long to wait between them?” Apparently, her novel had about eight different subplots, and she was worried about going two
Read more →One of the things I remember from my high school physics class is Newton’s First Law of Motion, also called the law of inertia: “An object in motion tends to remain in motion; an object at rest tends to remain at rest.” It applies to a lot
Read more →The subject matter of a story is seldom what really makes it interesting to a reader. A great idea that can be summed up in one tantalizing sentence may attract attention, but what keeps the reader going past the first page is a combination of the subject
Read more →A lot of writers I follow blithely spout how this story is going to run 70 thousand words, or 100 or 120, as if they can somehow see the eventual number of pages laid out before them in a crystal ball or something. Me, I have no
Read more →
