“There are eight million stories in the naked city. This has been one of them.” –The Naked City by Malvin Wald The thing about those eight million stories is, they’re all different from each other. And trying to make them be the same is a mistake. This
Read more →“There are three rules for writing a novel. Unfortunately, no one knows what they are.” -W. Somerset Maugham I’ve had at least four questions from people in the last week or two about that hoary old piece of advice “show, don’t tell.” So even though I just
Read more →“Show, don’t tell” is one of the two most misunderstood and misapplied pieces of writing advice that are commonly given to new writers (the other being “write what you know,” but that’s a different post.) It’s most commonly trotted out in relation to characterization, where “show” generally
Read more →Last week I got into another one of those discussions with a would-be writer who was convinced that before he ever sat down to write, he had to have the perfect idea – one with depth and resonance, something he found personally meaningful and inspiring, and above
Read more →There is an old saying that goes something like: “You can have it fast, you can have it cheap, you can have it good. Pick any two.” Meaning that if you want it fast and cheap, it won’t be good; if you want it fast and good,
Read more →For a certain kind of writer, the opening of a story is easy and fun – you get to allude to mysterious events and drop ominous clues. And then comes the middle, where all the stuff you’ve been alluding to has to start showing up and actually
Read more →Once again, I have been driven to frothing at the mouth by a would-be writer-and-critiquer’s thick-headedness in regard to both the construction of the English language and the so-called rules he’s trying to apply, and you folks are going to have to put up with the resulting
Read more →The book business has been changing radically every couple of years for the entire time I’ve been in it, but one thing does seem to remain constant: lots of people still want to break in and sell their novels, and a sizeable number of these folks either
Read more →One of the supposed truisms of writing is that a good plot must have conflict. And while this is, in fact, true, I’ve seen it misinterpreted so many times that I thought I’d talk about it a little. The problem always seems to come in the definition
Read more →On the very first day at Fourth Street Fantasy convention (which as of this posting, is still in session for another half-day or so), Elizabeth Bear mentioned running into a writing myth I’d never heard myself before: Women can’t ride stallions, because stallions get aggressive around women.
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