When I write books, I like to strongly develop multiple characters and pit their motives against each other. Because of this, and because my books contain multiple threads of plot, some immediately related to each other, and some that don’t combine until much further along in the story, it makes […]
Yearly Archives: 2014
74 posts
Point of view tends to be defined in absolutes by writing guides and teachers, but actually, it works more like a spectrum. Think of a camera filming a movie. It is not limited to close-up and wide-shot, but can actually be placed at any distance from, and any angle to, […]
There’s one thing that every story in recorded history has in common, and probably in unrecorded history as well: Stories are about people. Even stories about animals, such as Watership Down, are really about people. The people are merely represented by animals. Stories are told by people, about people, for […]
Today, I’m honored to have Monica Enderle Pierce as a guest on my blog, sharing an amazing, and somewhat terrifying, technique for writers! This post came about due to a couple of things. First, I recently read Famine, the latest book from Monica Enderle Pierce, a wonderful PNW Spec Fic […]
Yesterday we talked about pacing, and tomorrow we’ll cover tension. Today, I want to discuss a related term: Suspense. You may be asking yourself, why are we talking about pacing, suspense and tension as subsets of plot? Because while characterization plays an important role in managing these three elements of […]
Imagine an eight hour rafting trip with nothing but rapids from start to finish. It would be exhausting. Likewise, a rafting trip with just a few rapids and a long, slow river would be boring. The trick to writing a well-paced book is to have a lot of rapids interspersed […]