The fine art of murdering one’s own story with a butcher’s knife is old and well-respected in the high halls of Hollywood. One of the recent trends in that direction has to do with rampant and all-infecting cynicism. Movies apologize
I’ve read a fair few books on writing. Some books are really interesting theory; some books are really useful instruction on how writing mechanics work. Some are utter balderdash. This book takes another tack. While it has some really good
After last week, we know that we’re going somewhere; we even have a rough idea of where it is. Style requires that we know what we’re saying, that we not waste time in saying it, and that we make sure
Some authors get famous for their style, or at least get their fame attributed to style. Hemmingway, for instance; ask somebody why he’s famous ,and odds are that you’ll get something along the lines of ‘short sentences’. That’s not the
If you’ve ever trawled the waters of the internet for fiction prose, you know there are vast depths of it out there, most of it terribly written, much of it morally degrading filth. The filth can be thrown out, ignored;
Tension has a mortal enemy: the answer. Tension abhors the answer. Unfortunately for us, readers sometimes learn the answer too early. There are all sorts of ways to learn. Genre savvy, for instance, could inform them that the story almost
Tension is an essential element of most stories. Tension is an unanswered question, and the reader wants the answer to that question, wants to see not only the answer but how the answer comes about. The story, “Lily went to
Description is a fundamental part of the art of writing. Characters, items, landscapes, sounds, smells, emotions, actions, they all need to be described for the reader to apprehend their existence. Each one has its own set of possible characteristics. Each
The Holy Grail of characters, according to the internet, is the ‘rounded character’. We, as authors, must strive for a thoroughly realistic person, somebody complex and flawed and capable of surprising the reader at every turn. Sometimes, the demand is
Classifying stuff is a classic pass-time for scientists, critics, and the parents of young children who want to decide whether the brown goo on the floor is baby food or something… more odiferous. Unfortunately, unlike brown-goo-on-the-floor, characters have more than