Taxes in fiction

Taxes occupy an interesting position in the human psyche: for most of us, they are both boring and scary, as well as inevitable and deeply annoying. Mostly, they are scary because people don’t know how to fill out the horrible, overcomplicated tax forms, and/or don’t have the

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Bad communication

It is ironic that in these days of instant messaging so many plots still depend on two or more central characters not communicating effectively with each other. OK, a lot of pre-Internet stories depend on someone missing a phone call or a messenger, but at least someone

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The underpinnings of setting

Thanks for all your good wishes! I’m feeling much better this week. This week, I wanted to talk about setting. Setting is one of the “big three” things that scenes can contribute to (the other two being characterization and plot), but most writing advice focuses more intensely

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Why I’m Not At Work Today…

Here, belatedly, is why you don’t have a normal scheduled blog post today. For the last six months, one of my sisters and I have been planning a train trip from Minneapolis to Chicago, Chicago to LA, LA to San Francisco, San Francisco to Portland, and Portland

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First Open Mic of 2024!

It’s another open mic! I’m out of town at the moment, so talk among yourselves or ask stuff for me to talk about when I get back next week.

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Setting up the bazooka

There are two kinds of setups possible in a story: First, things that need to be established in order for the reader to understand or accept them as believable, and second, things the reader is supposed to remember without realizing how relevant they are until a surprise

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Rewriting

This may not sound like a continuation of the beginning-middle-end sequence I have going on in these posts, but it is. Because this is where the writer has a chance to solve some of the problems that came up in the first draft, especially if the story

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…you come to the end: then stop.

Endings are the point at which whatever changed in the protagonist’s life at the beginning has been resolved, and the story is over. Endings give many writers almost as much trouble as beginnings or middles (though often it’s not the same writers), though for different reasons. The

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Go on until … (Middles)

Every story that’s complete has a beginning, a middle, and an end. They may not be written or presented in that order; one or more elements may be implied rather than stated, or left out entirely; but the story has them. Middles are the hard part for

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