First Drafts
I’m just going to say it. Not all first drafts suck. But you’re never going to write a first draft that doesn’t suck if you believe otherwise.
Quick POV Edit to Consider
A quick POV edit: In short, she thought he was lying. In short, he was probably lying. They mean the same thing. But the first one comes from outside “her” head. The second one is what “she” is more likely to think. “He’s probably lying,” she thought. Versus “I thought he was lying,” she thought.
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Talk to the Hand
Something I’m exhausted of lately: The kind of drama that comes from people who want more from you than they’re willing to give. Sometimes that drama comes in very polite packages, and it’s only when you step back can you assess what’s not being done or said and strip the message down to its core
And Important Note on Success in Fiction…
…Treat every success in your fiction like it’s a clue. In other words, hide the holy shit out of it. Hide it in plain sight. Break away the second before the character succeeds, and show them after a time jump, struggling on the next thing. Show the bad guys flipping every success on its head.
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Why Aren’t You Selling?
Okay, harsh truth time. Not the harshest of the harsh truths that I’ve ever laid down, but still pretty harsh. There’s a “thing” that a lot of writers go through. A LOT A LOT. I do this and have been doing this for years, although I can see the light on the far side of
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How to Write Other Stuff (if you’re me)
I thought of some other genres to write up like yesterday’s post about mysteries. Adventure. The main character has to do some sort of big goal that requires putting themselves at physical risk somehow. So every scene, the character should try to achieve their goal by taking a physical risk that fails to resolve the goal,
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How to Write a Mystery (if you’re me)
Someone asked me how I write mysteries. Now that I’m writing them, it seems kind of like a “well, duh” question, although I recognize that they can seem intimidating from the outside, because I, too, was intimidated before I started writing them. Mostly, mostly, you write a mystery like you write anything else, however you happen
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Write What You Buy
I recently saw what looks like good advice: “Write what you buy.” So I looked at the books that I buy. I buy: Alternate history. Literary historical fiction. Fantasy, especially grimdark. But also Terry Pratchett. Classic mysteries. Literary horror. Diverse authors. Smartass romance. James Bond novels. Pulp SF and pulp crime. Short stories!!! Some days,
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Running twice as fast just to stand still
This morning is not the world’s greatest morning for a packaged sound bite about writing. The World Fantasy Awards have been released and nothing that I read and liked won. There’s a new conflict about how to handle serial sexual harassers in an entertainment industry adjacent to mine–everyone agrees that they should be handled, but
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Panicking over not Panicking
I woke up last night out of a nightmare due to the fact that I don’t have a list of tasks longer than my arm to accomplish STAT, only things that I really ought to get to sooner rather than later, and I was worried that I missed something vital. In the dream, my teeth
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