“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
Read more →A couple of weeks back, Rachel asked this: I was wondering how you work with and extend story ideas without getting bored? Because I have a habit of writing or imagining “moments” that really interest me, certain people or situations that last a page or two, but
Read more →NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) is coming up, and people are preparing to slam out 50,000 words between November 1 and November 30. The people at Creative Live have decided to offer a discount on a bunch of their how-to-write classes as part of “NaNoWriMo prep month.”
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