When I write a story, I sometimes realize that my plot requires a new character. This secondary character,1 therefore, is created as a facilitator of plot (including character arc); he gets the protagonist from point A to point B, or
We’ve all heard the adage, “Show, don’t tell.” It’s practically the first thing any creative writing course teaches, after the formatting requirements, and I’ve made a pun off it myself. It’s sound advice, but like all short-form bits, it’s not
G.K. Chesterton’s poem Lepanto opens thus: “White founts falling in the courts of the sun, And the Soldan of Byzantium is smiling as they run; There is laughter like the fountains in that face of all men feared; It stirs
How do we get readers to engage with our stories? It’s a perpetual question in writing, because the plain truth is this: every minute a reader spends on your story is purest charity. He could abandon it after the first
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