When a writer starts writing a novel, he or she is essentially standing at the bottom of a mountain, looking up. That writer is facing a zillion different moving parts that have to come together to make the climb successful, and which parts are important often change
Read more →Writers use a variety of different metaphors to describe how they think about plot and structure. One that I’ve seen used quite a bit is “beads on a string” – that is, figuring out a plot is a process of lining up a series of beads/scenes in
Read more →A while back, I had a discussion with a fellow professional writer whose stated goal was rapid production. Since he was the sort of writer who writes in huge bursts, focusing on speed above all else had been working well for him. My objection was that he
Read more →This summer, I got a new car. Well, new to me – it belonged to Dad for several years, until he decided that with Mom gone, he didn’t really need two cars and he liked the other one better. Anyway, it’s a 2008 model, with lots of
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