writing
Monday Morning #CharacterStory Writing Prompts 2011/06/13
A photo: see the top of this post. (Click for a larger view.) A personality type: ESFJ. A need: the need for security. A quirk: Names his many tropical fish all after characters from his favorite novel. Feel free to comment below with a link to your story if you use any of these prompts. [...]
On Plagiarists and “Real Writers”
Holly Lisle in her writing tips newsletter today wrote about plagiarism and being a “real writer.” I put “real writer” in quotes not for sarcastic effect. I put those words in quotes because those are the words Holly herself used, and I agree with them completely. She talks about some would-be aspiring authors, as it [...]
How to Write: Show and Tell
“Show; don’t tell.” Writers take great pride in passing on this standard advice. But what does it mean to “show” instead of “tell”? What does “show don’t tell” look like? And is that a hard-and-fast rule or just a rule of thumb? Are there any situations in which you should “tell,” not “show”? If you’ve [...]
Monday Morning #CharacterStory Writing Prompts 2011/06/06
A photo: top of this post, which the artist has entitled, “Please Don’t Go.” (Click for a larger view.) Of the photo he says, “This was a shot I took during Alyssa Barajas’ production of a music video for the song ‘Please Don’t Go’ by Barcelona. It was an amazing night, so many emotions and [...]
The Novelist’s New Clothes?
They say that novelists write millions of manuscripts each year. I’m not sure what the exact number is. But I might believe any number between 1,000,000 and 25,000,000. Of these millions, less than 100,000 will make it to print. That’s when the real fun starts. Of those, only a fraction will end up on the [...]
Monday Morning #CharacterStory Writing Prompts 2011/05/30
It’s Memorial Day (here in the US). That’s not a story prompt, just a note. Here are today’s story prompts. Use one or all of them to inspire a story. A photo: top of this post, part of a group of photos the artist has entitled, “Mis 25: Pasando la franja etaria.” (Click for a [...]
Character Needs: The Need for Autonomy
Finishing out these posts on character needs, extracted from Character Fiction 101: How to Write Fictional Characters and Character Stories. Today, a basic need that provides motivation for many powerful stories, the need for autonomy. Each of us needs to feel in control over his own life and his own choices, a measure of independence [...]
How to Write Those Darn Character Arcs
I’ll fess up and say I’ve avoided teaching about character, because, well, it’s complicated. And everyone has their own process. So I have to ask myself: How do I write character? Because I do write it. But how? What’s my internal process? Let’s start with the main character. The process is basically the same for [...]
How To Write Felt Need
One thing I try to figure out before starting a new book is my main character’s felt need. What do I mean by felt need? Some people might call it the character’s motivation, but I think it goes deeper than that. For instance, a character may be motivated to do his father’s bidding because if [...]
Gotta Write Who You Are
In How To Write Page-Turning Scenes, Holly Lisle tells the story of a writer who lived SF. He decided to write a fantasy-comedy, just because he thought he could sell it. And sell it he did. And then he sold another one, and then again and again and again… ten titles. Except it made him [...]