Character Building One topic that can get different writers into an argument concerns the relative importance of plot vs character. What's more important: the events that happen in a story, or the characters and how [...]
Just about any story of any length worth reading is composed of the very basic beginning, middle, and end structure. But as simple as that seems, when you look at it you can see how very important it is to good writing.
One of the hardest parts of writing for most authors is to be honest with the reader. It's perfectly understandable... fiction, by definition, is fabrication. It's a lie. The trick is to insert enough truth so as to make the audience relate to what's happening.
The one thing that new writers probably do worse than anything else (other than maybe spelling and grammar) is writing dialog. They want to make it "real" and like how people actually talk. They figure
This week I begin on that always fun quest, picking the next big story. Yup, that's right. After dealing with life the past couple of years, I'm finally set to return to the keyboard in a very creative way. Just one thing is slowing me down, though.... I don't know what I'm going to write. I'm amazed at all these people who have all
I'm getting ready to start prepping the next novel. As with all fiction writers, that means that I need to develop characters, settings, and situations which are relatable and compelling enough to make a reader want to slog through several hundred pages of my imagination. But there's something that I do, being a SF/F author, that authors in other genres don't have to: I have to create worlds. It's amazing how difficult it is to do that if your goal is to have coherent rules that can be
