It’s all about the characters. World building, plotting, and good writing are all important to a story—vitally so. But it’s the characters who make or break the story. It’s the characters who carry us through—or fail to. Bad characters can ruin a novel or movie that is otherwise flawless. Likewise, good ones can carry an […]
Early in the morning, a chickadee sings outside my window, two notes: B flat to A flat. I don’t hear an answering call, and eventually, it moves down the street, the call getting fainter and fainter until it’s gone. At some point, we all ask ourselves, why keep writing? When it’s going well, it can […]
Today, my doppelganger is taking a sick day. She’s not really sick, of course, but she has to try to experience everything, including lying to her boss. I know she’s watching telenovelas and eating chocolate chip cookies. I’m not worried about it. We’ve all been there. What I am worried about is my assignment. The […]
Write every day. Ten minutes a day. A thousand words a day. Just write. Free write in a journal. Write your book. Start some kind of specialty journal. Whatever you do, do it every day. Lots of advice and ideas on what to do as part of a daily writing habit abound. One of the […]
At a GrubStreet Muse and the Marketplace Writers Conference, I workshopped my novel query “pitch” with a goateed and bespectacled editor from Scribner: “After her mother spontaneously combusted on the Altiplano between Bolivia and Chile, Fallon struggles to grasp reality. Fifteen years later, her brother, who is bi-polar…” He sighed audibly and wrinkled his nose […]
As a teacher, I spend a lot of time talking to my students about failure—what it is, and isn’t, and why it has value. Often, I find myself paraphrasing this story from Yamamoto Tsunetomo’s Hagakure, about a councilman advocating a promotion for a man who had previously disgraced himself. Confronted with the question of why […]
[Editor’s note: This is the second part in a two-part series about writing romantic subplots. Yesterday’s post featured Part 1.] The Fluffy Romantic Subplot (Heroes of Olympus, Black Panther) Also: Subverting the Trope Let’s say you don’t want your romantic subplot to be that important. You just want something cute to show your audience. Take […]
Romantic subplots are like mushrooms. Some love ‘em, some hate ‘em, some avoid them as if they were poisonous, which is nigh impossible because they are everywhere. And this makes sense to a certain extent, because for most of us, sex and romance are a very large part of our lives. As good writers know […]
Tea with Strangers is inspired by the Tarot Illuminati deck, by Erik C. Dunne, and the companion book by Kim Huggens. Today is not a good day. My sister agreed to watch my kids while I do this interview, but she made it clear that it was putting her out. I’m exhausted from being up […]
When last we left you, my stalwart heroes, heroines, and genderqueer unicorns, I was writing about the life-hacks used by some well-known sff authors in writing effective dialogue. You can use these tricks to help get words on the page (consider Caroline Yoachim’s bracket-and-move-on-hack) or to improve their tone, pace, character, and style (as Sarah […]
