One of the things it’s easy to lose sight of is that “writing is a solitary business” has a lot of implications besides “it means you spend a lot of time sitting alone at your computer writing stuff.” Among other things, it means that everything comes down
Read more →“You do not rise to the level of your goals. You fall to the level of your systems.” – James Clear, Atomic Habits I’ve had several requests to talk about systems for writing fiction. The trouble is that a good, workable system is particular, even when it’s
Read more →Since before the Internet began, it seems, there’s been an ongoing argument about “plot-driven” stories vs. “character-driven” stories. By this time, there are a metric ton of how-to-write articles arguing that one is “better” than the other. And all those scare quotes are there because everybody in
Read more →A new year means a new beginning for many people, and it presents an irresistible opportunity for me to talk about beginning a story, even if most of you are probably in the middle of something at the moment. The first question that comes to mind is
Read more →It’s here! The Dark Lord’s Daughter is officially out. I’m excited and anxious and hopeful and lots of other things, which will probably last a couple of weeks until I have some idea how it’s doing. Meantime, I have a blog post to give you. This week
Read more →In many ways, stories are a balancing act, and the balance point for every story depends on exactly what the author is juggling and how much of whatever-it-is they have to keep in the air. A guy riding a unicycle is a balancing act, but so is
Read more →As I’ve said before, dialog isn’t a transcript of the way people talk. It’s a stripped-down model that takes out the majority of verbal pause-fillers that don’t add meaning most of the time, such as “um,” “er,” “you know,” “like,” “uh,” “well,” etc. The catch is that
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 →There’s a scene in the Great Muppet Caper in which Lady Holiday, while interviewing Miss Piggy for a receptionist job, tells her a lot of personal information about her family relationships and the valuable jewelry (the Baseball Diamond…) she is going to put on display. When Miss
Read more →“How did you decide what viewpoint to use for your first novel?” I was more than a little bemused by the question, because that is one of many supposedly vital writing decisions that I don’t remember making, let alone angsting over the way the questioner obviously was.
Read more →
