First, a couple of announcements. My e-publisher is having a summer sale, which includes Sorcery and Cecelia and a bunch of other things. It lasts until July 22nd. Second, I’m hoping that at some time in the next month or thereabouts, the new, improved, much cleaner and more
Read more →“He was already dead when I got there” is a common claim in mystery novels, but all too often it’s also the answer when fans ask writers “Why did you kill off my favorite character?” And as with mystery novels, the claim is frequently disbelieved, especially when
Read more →The other day somebody asked me what a plot point was, and I had to stop and think about it. As usual, when I have to stop and think about anything writing-related, I end up doing a blog post to clarify my thinking. “Plot points” are one
Read more →Every writer ends up writing about someone who isn’t exactly like them sooner or later – and it’s nearly always sooner, given the number of characters in the average novel. The minor characters, walk-ons, and even the important secondary characters can usually be fudged, but the main
Read more →(No, this post is not about vampires.) The question “what’s at stake for the characters?” has been much on my mind lately, as it’s been at the root of some of the difficulties I’ve been having developing a plot for my current work-soon-to-be-in-process-I-hope. I have what I
Read more →Back in the mid 1990s, shortly after Dealing with Dragons came out, I was asked to join a panel of folks to talk about dragons, and the topic I was handed to talk about was “Dragons and Gender Bias.” After blinking several times, I asked the moderator just
Read more →I spent last time talking about a manuscript full of stupid mistakes that didn’t work. This time, I’m going to talk about some where it does. Because in real life, people forget critical information, give in to impulses that turn out to be a Really Bad Idea,
Read more →As some of you already know, I’ve been listening to a series of lectures on literature and theory and basically all the college-level English stuff I didn’t take in college. One of the recent lectures examined two books that, in the words of the lecturer, each began
Read more →So for some reason or other I was poking around on the web last week and I ran across somebody’s “character worksheet” – basically a fill-in-the-blanks page that started with “name” “age” and “physical description” and then had half a dozen things like “career goals” and “religion”
Read more →“No battle plan survives contact with the enemy.” – Helmuth von Moltke “A writer should always reserve the right to have a better idea.” – Lois McMaster Bujold Prewriting notes – whether they’re about plot, background, or characters – are the writer’s battle plan, and therefore exceedingly
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