The skeleton in the closet

There are a couple of ways of looking at plot, ranging from the bird’s-eye view at a macro level to the order of scenes, and events and incidents within scenes. The one most people run across first — and one of the most useful ways of looking

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The Naming of Names

One of the perennial questions I get from people, especially those who want to be writers, is “how do you come up with the names?”-meaning, usually, the “weird fantasy names” in settings that bear no resemblance to the “real world,” rather than the more ordinary names like

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How To Be A Writer

Write. No, really, that’s it. It’s kind of a definitional thing. What you have to be in order to be a writer is, you have to be someone who writes.  Period.  You don’t have to be nice; you don’t have to be educated; you don’t have to

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