Why do novels have chapters, and how do you figure out where to start or end them? Well, not all novels do have chapters ( see most of Terry Pratchett’s books and John M. Ford’s Growing Up Weightless for example). Most do, though, and have since the
Read more →Since it is two weeks until The Dark Lord’s Daughter goes on sale and my brain is entirely full of all the fuss around the book launch, I thought I would talk some about the way the book opens and why and how I made some of
Read more →There’s a lot of emphasis these days on prewriting—that is, all the stuff you need to do before you sit down and actually start Chapter One. It is a comforting thing for many writers, because it gives people a plausible method to follow. Do this, decide that,
Read more →I am still struggling with the WIP. After going to COsine in Colorado Springs, I became convinced that I’m starting in the wrong place and doing too much scene-setting, but when I try to revise I bog down in considerations of what the readers need to know,
Read more →Most writers get something “for free” – some part of writing that they don’t have to work at to get it to an acceptable level. Sometimes it’s something general: plot development, emotionally complex characterization, solid background, an intuitive grasp of story structure. Sometimes it’s something more narrowly
Read more →A lot of writers stall at the very beginning of story construction – at the idea stage – because they have never thought about the difference between situations, incidents/events, and actual plot, much less how to move from any one of these to any of the others.
Read more →“Beginning: The point in time or space when something starts.” – Oxford languages. From that deceptively simple definition stems a lot of writerly misunderstanding. At a rough and very unscientific estimate, around 90% of the writing advice on beginnings talks about what belongs in the first few
Read more →“Plot-noodling” is a term I came up with to describe a … thing … that I and some of my writer friends do when one of us is stuck; it involves the writer sitting down with one or (rarely) two other people, who ask the writer a
Read more →For a lot of stories, the choice of viewpoint character seems obvious, either because the writer starts with a character and develops the plot later, or because they start with a plotline in which one particular character is at the center of the action. I said “seems
Read more →Ultimately, plots are driven by the characters. Even when the main character is shipwrecked on a desert island and supposedly forced by this outside circumstance to struggle against nature, the character could simply give up and starve to death. Most writers don’t choose characters who would do
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