Writing: From Character to Plot

Last October, I suddenly lost all my files because of a) a new computer which lacked something all my others had had, a dedicated data disk and b) failure of the backup device I was using instead.  This post is not about computer stuff and that’s all I’m going to say about it. This is Read More…

Sometimes the Brain Surprises…

I wrote about this the other day (and then forgot to post it until the day after I wrote it, DUH) over on Paksworld, but it’s a general enough “How WriterBrains Work” story that some of you may be interested, too. As mentioned, I’ve started Book II of the Horngard group, and am presently just Read More…

Titles

Someone on Twitter this morning asked a writing group “What is the significance of your title?  Could it be something else?”   Hmmm.  But my NewBook has no title yet, so let’s talk titles. The title of a book has different roles, as seen by the writer, the editor/publisher, and the reader. Let’s look first at Read More…

Some Thoughts on WriterBrain, Second Rock

Dorothy L. Sayers, who wrote some of my favorite books, also wrote essays I’ve found very useful, especially her writing on the doctrine of the Trinity and its relation to creative writing and the kinds of problems that result from what she called “Scalene Trinities.”  For the non-Christians (which I wasn’t when I first read Read More…

Fast Tips for Tightening Your Writing

Whether it’s a letter, essay, short story, or longer pieces, here are some easy ways to make it tighter, snappier, and (if you’re up against a word limit) shorter.  Go active:  change passive voice (“He was hit by a truck”) to active voice  (“A truck hit him.”)   Watch for sneaky forms of passive by scanning Read More…

What Writers Argue About

Writers argue about everything.   We hold different views on what other writers *should* write about, what topics are too something (ordinary, fantastic, political, politically naive, mundane, exotic, narrow, broad…) or not enough something (same list), how writers should handle certain topics, if writers should use some hot-button term, whether a phrase in common use 150 Read More…

NewBook Wakes Up

NewBook has acquired impulsion (in horses, the compressed desire to go forward…the horse is “between legs and hand” or “on the bit”.)  It’s pushing me now to write more , a very good sign, even if, in the end, it means dumping a lot already written.   Sunday the 29th, it was at 52,500+ a bit Read More…

Why Does It Slow Down? (Tech Post)

One reason many people who start out wanting to write don’t go on with it is that they have lots of ideas, start writing and then…the story slows down.  Or actually stops.   They don’t know why.  They don’t know that this is normal for many writers.  They sure don’t know what to do about it.   Read More…

The Naming of People, Places, Things

Without looking up the source (bad scholar, but it’s that kind of day)  I think it was Owen Barfield in an essay about language, corporations, and legal fictions who suggested that language itself is rooted  in the ability to abstract and name a concept, and that is itself a form of fiction (or lie, if Read More…

Culture-building: Virtues & Vices

See, there’s a bonus to the previous post–today you get two new posts.   Today’s topic is culture-building–some thoughts on creating cultures-not-like-ours-exactly (or at all) and specifically some thoughts on how cultures differentiate along the fault lines of, well, faults.  What’s right.  What’s wrong.  What the people in that culture think about the “why” behind what’s Read More…