Mar 21 2013
In the last post, we had a little bit of a debate about literary fiction versus commercial fiction in the comments, thus I wanted to take a moment to point out something very important. Just because fiction is commercial, doesn’t mean it’s the equivalent of Transformers Part 5. Commercial fiction runs the gambit from fluff that is …
Mar 20 2013
Our bodies tend to be a bit lazy, and they like to lie. They tell us we need a day or two or twenty off, and the longer we’re away from the work, the easier it is to let things slip, to see a new shiny and start a newer, more exciting project. In this business, time is our enemy. Always remember this.
Mar 19 2013
Even literary fiction involves some outside force that is causing the contemplation, depression, rebellion, etc. Whether it is the decline of the aristocracy and rise of the middle class (Proust’s “In Search of Lost Time”) or implosion of society and humans turned cannibals in Cormac McCarthy’s Pultizer-winning The Road, we always have an outside pressure and an antagonist to drive the story momentum.
Mar 18 2013
What this means is that a character being his or her own worst enemy alone is not enough. There MUST be a story problem that generates the tension and change. With no story problem, there is no way to have dramatic tension. It just becomes a character being TDTL (Too Dumb To Live). We don’t have a novel, we have self-indulgence.
Mar 15 2013
Time is our enemy. Most people don’t have enough. This is why our writing must be tight, direct and hook early. Modern audiences have the attention span of a toddler hopped up on 2 liters of Coke. We can’t afford to let them drift. Drift=Bad juju I’ve edited countless books, many from new authors. I …
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