Fashions in Description

Writing, like everything else human beings do, has fads and fashions that shift and change over time. One of the most obvious has to do with how description is handled in fiction. A lot of really early works don’t spend a lot of time describing mead-halls, hostelries,

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Perception and plotting

One of the writer complaints I hear regularly about plotting is some variation on “I can’t come up with a plot that’s compelling for the reader. I can’t make the reader care about what happens to the characters. I can’t make the reader care about what’s at

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Missing Ursula le Guin

Ursula le Guin was one of the greats of the SF/F field. It hurts to have to write that sentence in the past tense, even though 88 years is a good run by anyone’s standards. I’ve been reading le Guin’s work since I was thirteen and Rocannon’s

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