Archive for Writing
I just took a look at the demo for Sudowrite, an AI-based text-generation tool to help fiction writers. (You can sign up for a free trial; after the trial period, it costs $10/month.) I find it mildly intriguing, but not something I’m likely to use. But I’m amused by a couple of things in the […]
I’m thinking about what the difference is between an amazing major revelation late in a story (I’ll call this a Big Reveal) and an annoying Surprise Twist Ending. Here are some of my thoughts. Some examples of good Big Reveals of the sort that I’m thinking of (no specific spoilers here, but I suppose that […]
I understand why people who are giving talks or writing articles use phrases like these that assume a shared experience: We’ve all had the experience of … Everyone here knows … You’d be surprised at … But I’d like to recommend not doing that. Such phrases are very often inaccurate (twice yesterday, presenters said things […]
In 1989, I wrote a story (titled “Absences”) about a kid and her brother who had survived an alien invasion. Part of the core idea of the story was that the invading aliens were super sensitive to sound; humans who made too much noise got killed, and the protagonist’s brother was deaf, so the protagonist […]
Jim was in town this week. Good visit—played various boardgames, went through some Puzzled Pint puzzles (you can download past puzzle sets from their archives), chatted about stuff, went to the Moffett Field Historical Society Museum, had a roundsing. Even though I’ve lived in this area for most of my life, I didn’t know the […]
In fiction, it’s common for characters to face obstacles, which they often overcome with great difficulty. One of the problems that I often run into when I’m writing fiction is coming up with obstacles that are both (a) difficult to overcome, and (b) not impossible to overcome. So I’m wondering if any of y’all have […]
From a 1997 novel: She puts away her notebook. [10 sentences elided here—about half a page. No mention of her notebook anywhere in here.] [Character name] puts away her notebook. [Yes, I understand that it would be possible to construct a rationale for why this made sense or was a clever hint toward something or […]
Dreamed that I received a response, via USPS, to a story I had submitted to a magazine. The response took the form of an International Reply Coupon stapled to a small plastic bag. Inside the bag were two small wooden tokens, butterflies I think, and a brief note from Charlie Jane Anders (who hadn’t, I […]
I’m in Santa Fe for a few days. Mary Anne is here for a Wild Cards authors gathering, and I’m...
Another lesson for me on the difficulty of seeing outside your own cultural context: In Delany's City of a Thousand...
I seem to be focused on tropes today. I just read a 1972 science fiction story, by a male author,...
I encounter this idea regularly in stories, both submissions and published: A character is bound (by a vow, by brain...