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 […]
I did it again. I let Pinterest steal more than a half hour of my precious time away. It started out innocently enough. I opened the app – I’m not sure exactly why. Nothing else special was happening at the moment, or I was bored, or I was procrastinating from something I should have been […]
We’re here today with a special interview with Issue 034 author Virginia M. Mohlere about her featured story “The Thing in the Walls Wants Your Small Change.” Come and join us as we talk dragons and curiosity. LSQ: A tiny dragon and coins! What a fun story. Is this a modern take on the old […]
Issue 033 author Katharine Coldiron explores a dystopian future where her protagonist hunts down a once simple but now almost impossible pleasure: the sound of opera. Go read her short story “C-A-L-L-A-S” first, then continue below to our conversation with Katharine about her story and writing in general. LSQ: Your dystopian future created by an […]
Nope, it’s not “rejection”. Many moons ago, in a college short story writing class, the professor very kindly handed me back the story I’d written and told me, “It’s not a complete story. It’s a vignette.” This means, of course, that it lacked a full story arc. Ever since then, when I start a new […]
