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
A caution for all of those writers who are floundering with their own plots—don't stay inside your head, be willing to ask someone you trust to help give you a new perspective.
This is the one area the new writers I work with (or have worked with in the past) are lacking: the ability to both be able to finish and then to move to the next project. Yeah, it's great to finish that first draft, but that's just the start. Many more rewrites are to follow.
For very involved stories where continuity can be a constant headache, there can be only one solution: copious notes. One of the problems with copious notes is their organization. Fortunately, since we live in the future, there is a solution: wiki.
