Where Normal Need Not Apply
Lately I’ve been struck by how similar music is to writing. Both arts use a non-visual medium to create an emotion. And often, just like writing, music is meant to create movies in our mind for a do-it-yourself music video. If you’ve ever watched a movie with the sound turned […]
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Update below. No, I’m not talking about using Twitter to cheat in a relationship. (Answer: No, if for no other reason than nothing is ever as secure as you think it is.) I’m talking about whether you should cheat Twitter’s 140 character limit and use extended tweets. Ever since Twitter […]
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In preparation for Valentine’s Day, a recent USA Today article (5/14 ETA: article no longer in USA Today archives) gave the relationship advice that a man should: “look into her eyes, focus on what she says and really talk to her.” Wow, earth-shattering ideas. Or not. The suggestion to treat a woman like […]
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We’ve learned that head-hopping should be avoided if we want to maintain a strong connection between the reader and the characters, and we’ve learned that just calling something omniscient doesn’t solve the head-hopping problem. This brings up the obvious question: How do we avoid head-hopping? The answer might be different […]
Last time, we talked about how head-hopping is something to avoid, and not just because there’s a rule against it. Any change in point-of-view (POV), whether using an “allowed” technique or not, risks weakening the connection between the reader and the story. Head-hopping authors sometimes say they’re writing in omniscient […]
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Depending on who you talk to, head-hopping is somewhere between a shoulder shrug and the-world-is-ending bad. Note that neither of those extremes thinks that head-hopping is good. I suppose it could be positive if used in some sci-fi story, along the lines of “body snatchers,” but we’re talking about it […]
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If we don’t want to waste time writing a story that will never get anywhere, we have to make sure we’ll be able to complete it. And guess what? It’s not completed when we, as writers, think it is. Going from seed idea to completion happens over two stages. So […]
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Writers are often overwhelmed with story ideas. When I’m in the middle of difficult revisions, it’s normal for me to think of several other shiny ideas that I would much rather work on instead of doing yet another round of edits. But not every idea is worthy of a story, […]
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Every story begins with an idea. Sometimes this idea comes to authors out of the blue. Sometimes a dream provides the spark. Sometimes “people watching” or an overheard conversation will trigger the thought. But no matter where it comes from, the idea kicks off everything else, like a seed from which […]
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Yesterday, the inimitable Tawna Fenske had a blog post about how reading outside our comfort zone can make us better writers. Her post got me thinking about a book I recently finished, Anna and the French Kiss by Stephanie Perkins. Unlike my usual genres of paranormal or historical, Anna and […]
