More on female characters in fiction
A couple of weeks ago, I read a particularly long run of submissions with particularly unfortunate anti-woman aspects. All sorts...
Archive for Writing
Unfamiliar words
A common problem in fantasy and science fiction stories is drowning the reader in made-up words at the start of...
What kind of world is your story set in?
Here's something I see often in stories: The story appears to be set on modern Earth. Everyone looks and acts...
For writers researching little details
Just happened across the LJ community called little_details, which provides a place for writers to ask questions to help make...
A few notes on women in fiction
tacityhydra just mentioned the Mo Movie Measure in passing; I was going to post this comment in response to that...
Song chorus progression
One of the things I like about some country songs is the way the choruses work. For example, there seems...
Tiptree on genius
David M recently mentioned ambition and genius, among other things. I've recently finally gotten back to reading Julie P's Tiptree...
Plotting at the keyboard
I mentioned to Mary Anne this afternoon that I pretty much can't plot (whether fiction or games) unless I'm sitting...
Pet peeve: The future of evil
(Warning: this entry contains gross imagery.) We see this kind of story fairly often: First the author postulates a future...
Complete your changes
Advice to anyone who writes anything on a computer: Say you've written the line "The men ran down the hill."...
Mysteriosity
Been seeing a fair number of submissions lately in which Something Mysterious Is Going On--and by two-thirds of the way...
Dead narrators aren’t much fun
Once upon a time, not so very long ago, there was a very popular movie that had a surprise twist...