Guns-on-the-Wall
If a writer tailors their writing toward a reader, rather than writing something intended to be purely private, they need to keep the...
Precise or Purple: How Much Detail Is Too Much?
This is a hard question, because tastes differ a lot from writer to writer and from reader to reader. Between Hemingway and Melville is...
Avoiding the Trope-osphere
When I was working on “Etched in Fire” and workshopping my chapters, everyone in my workshop seized on a particular scene. Without too...
Making Magic Real Part II: What Is It Like?
Once you’ve hammered out your consistent rules for magic, you need to write it so the reader believes in it. And that means...
Making Magic Real, Part I: Consistency
So you’re writing a fantasy novel. That means anything goes, doesn’t it? Your wizards can teleport, zap the evil guys with lightning,...
Writing Combat if You're Not a Fighter
Aside from gym courses in archery and fencing when I was in college, I have never studied any form of fighting. The fencing class gave...
I Wrote It, But I Hate It
Hating the writing I produce: this is one of my biggest stumbling blocks. I’ve only now come to understand that this is a common...
Character Vs. Narrator Epic Smackdown
I am the Narrator. It’s my job to create the story and to decide what the characters do and don’t see. I have to decide whose eyes the...
The Closet of Lurking Ideas
Many years ago, at a science fiction convention, I opened my mouth to ask Poul Anderson an insightful question about his use of mythic...
Characters: Paper or Flesh?
There is a great diversity of authors out there, and since there is no one way of writing, we all start with different things;...