I’ve had a number of writers I’ve mentored or critiqued ask me some form of this question. Sometimes it’s a plaintive wail expressing the writer’s earnest hope that they can overcome their ”issues.” Sometimes it’s a defiant roar: “Craft? Bah! … Continue reading
Arthur C. Clarke posited long ago that any significantly advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. I’d like to turn that aphorism on its head and suggest that any significantly advanced magic is indistinguishable from technology. Simply put, the magic of … Continue reading
There are two parties involved in critique: the critiquer and the critiquee. Okay, I just made those words up. So, let’s say there is the giver of the critique and the recipient of the critique. This is true whether the parties are … Continue reading
Action and suspense sequences and scenes with high emotional content (as in romantic situations) are probably the most important type of scene that can be sabotaged by excess verbal baggage or convoluted sentences. There are also sentences that are intended … Continue reading
Recently, I’ve been critiquing with several other authors for the purpose of learning more about craft. They are staunch proponents of making dialogue do the work of carrying the story. Some time back, I heard a new author complain that … Continue reading
Kurt Vonnegut came up with eight rules for writing fiction, nicely referenced in an interview with Andrew O’Hagan, and noted there by O’Hagan as: “His rules for good writing are entirely bogus – he knew it, too – but they are not un-useful. Rules are just a bunch of things someone adorned into precepts while they were on the way to getting it wrong, but Vonnegut got it right now and then so we’d do well to listen.”
Continue readingScreenplay is structure, they tell me. I tell them that it’s lucky I don’t write screenplays then, but this makes no difference, apparently. They tell me that even novelists need to be aware of the three-act structure, the need for … Continue reading
Famously, the internet is full of cats. Also – I am given to understand – pornography, but it’s the cats that I find, everywhere I look. Cats, and writers talking about their process. Sometimes I do that too, and I … Continue reading
During the course of one’s career as an author, writer, scribbler, whatever you want to call yourself, there are peaks and troughs. Sometimes, it all works. You can do no wrong. Others, it’s the continuing grind, beating your head against … Continue reading
