These two related booby-traps are often hidden beneath our little darlings (clever dialogue, beautiful description, etc). That is probably why Stephen King recommended we kill them. Yes, kill them dead. No burying them in the Pet Semetary, also known as “revision.” Killing means killing….as in delete forever. Yet too many times we hang on to those favorite characters or bits of dialogue, reworking them and hoping we can make them fit…at the expense of the rest of the story.
Tag: story
Aug 06 2010
Writing and the Junk Drawer of Life–Finding a Place for Everything
Our lives are all like junk drawers; full of the messy, the missing, the mystifying and the magical.
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Jun 25 2010
Writers–Embrace the Weirdness
Writing is more than word count, although you do have to sit your butt in a chair and get it done. Crappy writers never run out of drivel to put on a page. The great writers are always working even beyond the desk chair. They read, watch movies, eavesdrop and their minds are only gently tethered to this plane.
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Mar 25 2010
The Secret to Story Magic
Most of the time when I hear a new writer announce that his piece is “literary fiction,” that is a short-hand cue for me to expect no structure, lots of similes, metaphors, self-indulgent flashbacks and no overall conflict other than a main character’s really pretentious angst. Most of the time, it smacks of self-therapy thinly guised as a story
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Feb 23 2010
Writing a Novel–Plot or Character? Which Comes First?
So what book (movie) do you want to write? Write it down and REMEMBER IT. It is very easy to listen to feedback and edit, edit, edit and then lose the original story you wanted to write in the first place.
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International Association of Professional Writers & Editors
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