Oct 17 2013
We’re discussing ways to fuel the muse before NaNo. Yesterday, we discussed movies and how to use them, and I will delve a tad further with that today. One of the major reasons many writers fail to complete the story is there isn’t a single CORE story problem in need of resolution. The story dies because it lacks a beating heart and a skeleton. Stories with no hearts and skeletons are primordial adverb ooze and not good for much other than scaring small children.
Oct 16 2013
Great movies have great dialogue. Study it. How do characters talk? When I get submissions, one of the major problems I see is in dialogue. Coaching the reader, brain-holding, and people simply talking in ways that are unrealistic. For instance, most of us, when having a conversation, don’t sit and call each other by name.
Oct 11 2013
NaNo, in my opinion, is bootcamp to train up professionals. Granted, no one is shooting live rounds at us while we belly-crawl through mud, BUT we do have to put words on a page even when the toddler has to go to the potty every thirty seconds. Many of us are also working a day job and we have family drama shooting rounds at us from all directions.
Oct 10 2013
There are few things more defeating that to a) start off hot and heavy only to write ourselves into a corner or b) invest a month of suffering and sleep-deprivation only to end up with a derailed mess that can never be repaired short of tearing it down to the foundation and starting over.
Oct 08 2013
Plot and world-building are merely delivery systems for conflict and character—real “human” emotions and experiences. If we write something that’s all car chases, vampire bites and geeky technology we’ve invented, the story will be uninteresting and superficial. I see this a lot on submissions. A writer gets so fascinated with dragons or terrorists or aliens that the body of the work lacks a beating human heart.
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