Here’s the structure of a scene tends to go: Beginning Middle Ending Tell the reader everything they need to know for that scene in the beginning of that scene, unless the information spoils a plot twist or a reveal somewhere in the middle. Do not tell the reader anything they don’t need to know for that scene. […]
Every writer has at least a couple of rules that they have to break, in order to become their own best writer. You may only break those rules if the reader will get more pleasure/interest/benefit out of those rules being broken than otherwise. Don’t be lazy. Be creative. … It takes writing time to write
I’m not sure how to explain it, but I’m trying to look at the best of the best books that I read and see them as a librarian might–who needs this book? who would love it? I read this one recently and was very impressed. Roughneck is a standalone graphic novel by Jeff Lemire, who does a
Think Like a Librarian: Roughneck, by Jeff Lemire Read More »
A door opened, and an apocalypse stepped in. It wasn’t something that could be helped, really. I mean, it might have escaped from a government lab, but it was a perfect storm, a once in a million years incident of bad luck. Only, something decided to exploit that bad luck. It went beyond chance or an
A lot of writers edit their words until they behave themselves properly. Don’t be that writer. Words shouldn’t behave themselves. … It takes writing time to write these posts. If you enjoyed this post, please take a moment to check out my latest book, One Dark Summer Night, or sign up for my newsletter.
Cozies are a subset of the mystery genre in which the author distracts the reader from the PTSD areas of their lives. They’re the gentle hugs of stories, and yet they revolve around some crime, because nothing is as entertaining as gossip. </snark> Cozies actually: Feature a main character you wouldn’t mind going on vacation
The post about word count and subplots was getting long, so I’ll break this out here: I think George R.R. Martin is writing parallel novels inside each of his books. There is a main plot and a main character to each book. You can figure this out by counting which POV character has the most
A Song of Ice and Fire: Structure/Word Count Case Study Read More »
This is a terrible question. It doesn’t really mean anything other than “on average, we see XYZ wordcounts in this genre.” And it says nothing about why. Here’s a better question: When do readers of this genre want to see subplots, and what kind? A novel with one main plot is about 40-50K. For example, The Stepford Wives
I’ve been studying The Turn of the Screw lately. A group of people are sitting around the fire telling Christmas ghost stories, as you do (this is a Victorian UK thing). Storyteller (Douglas) claims that the story he’s about to tell comes from his sister’s governess, who has been dead 20 years. He sends away for
There’s always some sucker willing to bumble into the wrong part of town…or some small town willing to host something it shouldn’t. Something’s looking for trouble. Surprise, surprise, our characters are just the suckers needed–wrong place, wrong time, and distracted. Technically, the characters didn’t ask for it, although maaaaybe they tried to get a little something
