Sounding a Little Different

Apparently there’s some interest in techniques for crowd control, so I’ll address that next post. In this one, I want to continue talking about characters’ voices, and ways of making them different. First, a couple of examples of what I mean by “characters who have radically different

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Cliches and tropes

One of the questions that came up in comments recently was “What’s the difference between a cliché and a trope?” The simple and obvious answer is “The way the words are currently used on the Internet, not much.” But there’s a bit more to it than that.

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Simple vs. easy

As some of you may know, I knit. (My current project is a heavily cabled cape [scroll down a bit for the pattern picture] and it’s my first time doing complex cables. I’m about halfway through and having a blast.) Every so often, I take one of

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Formal and informal

First off, it has been brought to my attention (thanks, John!) that I need to tell my regular readers that The Far West is now out and available in hardcover. The e-book will be out in October, they tell me. On to the post. Back in the

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Writing and Learning styles

Last Sunday, I was having so much fun going through Mom’s old writing books that I promised a couple more posts on the subject…forgetting that I was going to be out of town until the end of Wiscon. So you’ll have to wait a week for me

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More than repetition

“There’s more to the theater than repetition. There’s more to the theater than repetition. There’s more to the theater than repetition… “But not much!”  – The Flying Karamozov Brothers   There are some basic things about writing that people who’ve done it for a while tend to

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The Lego Theory, Part 7

OK, you twisted my arm. But I’m stopping at scenes. Really. As I said, paragraphs are where this analogy switches from looking at building blocks to looking at what you are building out of the building blocks. Consequently, the main properties of paragraphs aren’t so much about

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