Mary Catelli's Erraticly Updated and Exceedingly Ill-Organized Journal

It's unwise to make the climax a purely intellectual problem solved.

Even a mystery ends, usually, with a show-down with the culprit, who is often forced into confession.  The classic summing up scene features all the major characters and forces them all into new relationships.  I have read mysteries that end earlier than that, but in scenes where a cop is persuaded to  bring charges -- usually not only by the strength of the evidence, but by unwillingness to let such evil go unpunished, or the realization that the murderer has someone else he has enough reason to murder by his own standards.

Human reaction to the realization is an integral part of the climax.  A villain screaming out in impotent rage is a cliche for the excellent reason that it brings the story down from the intellectual level to the level of emotions and sentiments, fiction's natural and necessary field.

Retelling King Arthur -- or Robin Hood -- hits a major problem:  the characters are given.  And the tension between the readers' thinking "No, you've got that wrong," and the readers' thinking, "Same old, same old," is even tighter than in most works of fiction, because readers will allow more leeway in what dragons can do than in what, say, Lancelot's character is like.

( Read more... )

I have a mad scientist in a story.

( Read more... )

grumble grumble grouse grouse grouse. . . .

Read a bit of world-building where a writer was talking about a Dark Ages analog in his world.  And then threw in a comment about having latter concepts such as inquisitions -- and witch trials.

( Read more... )

Details in prose draw the eye.  They announce what's important.  Which is why it is wise to curb your world-building in places, even allow the stereotypes to take control.

( Read more... )

Sometimes it's annoying when characters inside a book act as if they had never read any kind of story like the one they are in.  Though I hear more complaints about it than I feel it myself. . . .
( Read more... )

The muse has felt the season.  She made some suggestions about a story with some Christmas themes still in outline.  Not, mind you, Christmasy suggestions, just things about making the villainess nasty and the hero and heroine's lives unpleasant.  But still had me off and mediatating on the changes in Christmas customs.
( Read more... )

For, dear me, why abandon a belief
Merely because it ceases to be true.
Cling to it long enough, and not a doubt
It will turn true again, for so it goes.
Most of the change we think we see in life
Is due to truths being in and out of favour.
( Read more... )

One needs to have a lot of respect for cliches.  Nothing gets to be a cliche without good reason, because without good reason, it would not get used over and over and over and over again. . . .

( Read more... )

Sometimes it can be really difficult to wrassle that metaphor down to the ground.

It's not the avoiding cliches so much.  True, it can be a problem because of the appropriateness issue, but it's not the big one.

( Read more... )