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one more thing. . .
Jun. 11th, 2013 08:21 pmIf you have an idea for a setting, and it's wild, or wacky, or wonderful enough to hold the reader's attention, it is at least at first easy enough to invent some characters, give them some excuse to move about, and set them loose.
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shadows and stuff
Apr. 25th, 2013 09:08 pmWhen writing a scene it has to have some purpose. Ideally, it should have several -- never make it do one thing when it can do two, never make it do two when it can do three, never make it do five or six.
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wrassling a metaphor
Jun. 23rd, 2011 09:47 pmSometimes 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.
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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.
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the long and short of it
Dec. 13th, 2010 04:56 pmAh the fun and games of determining the lengths of things in stories. . . sentences, paragraph, scenes. . . chapters, too, but I find that chapters affect reading less than other things.
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foreshadowing that doesn't set up
Jul. 26th, 2010 11:51 pmWhen philosophically considering the issue, there is foreshadowing, which alerts the reader to what can happen, so it doesn't hit him like a pie in the face, and set-up, which justifies what happens next.
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timely transitions
Jun. 8th, 2010 08:52 pmOf course, even before you wrestle with how to transition between scenes and indicate time passing, first you have to decide to transition. Which can be interesting in itself.
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prequels and order
May. 15th, 2010 10:47 pmSome prequels don't have a question about reading order. The original "prequel" The Hobbit actually was written before The Lord of the Rings so there's no reason to read The Lord of the Rings first.
But most labeled prequels were written after other works, and depict events earlier (for the main character, and unless time travel was involved, for everyone and the world as well). So do you read it in the order of published, or in the order from the character's POV?
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But most labeled prequels were written after other works, and depict events earlier (for the main character, and unless time travel was involved, for everyone and the world as well). So do you read it in the order of published, or in the order from the character's POV?
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Bildungsroman fantasy
Jan. 28th, 2010 11:54 pmI've run across a few fantasies lately that were bildungsroman*, which leads me to ponder the philosophy of plotting them. ('cause aesthetics is a branch of philosophy. 0:)
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*Just in case: A bilgunsroman is a novel of education, a coming-of-age story.
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*Just in case: A bilgunsroman is a novel of education, a coming-of-age story.
carrying through
Dec. 30th, 2009 11:25 pmBeen pondering some more -- and OTOH, sometimes you do have to carry through stuff. Local color doesn't exhaust them; even moving the plot forward doesn't; they have to figure later in the story.
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fun all the way
Dec. 28th, 2009 11:55 amThere are some writers who write excellent first halves of books.
The problem is that they throw all this wonderful, whimsical stuff in the first half, and then in the second, they have to resolve the plot, so they stop throwing wonderful, whimsical stuff at you and so the story stops being fun.
The real problem is, you really do have to reach some kind of resolution so merely going on throwing stuff about doesn't fulfill the purposes of the story. It can be hard to juggle an interesting setting and the plot -- but I've noticed the problem seems the worst in books that stay in one place. Much maligned though the quest is, it, or any kind of journey, gives your characters excuse to keep on moving to new neat stuff while you are pulling together the plot.
The problem is that they throw all this wonderful, whimsical stuff in the first half, and then in the second, they have to resolve the plot, so they stop throwing wonderful, whimsical stuff at you and so the story stops being fun.
The real problem is, you really do have to reach some kind of resolution so merely going on throwing stuff about doesn't fulfill the purposes of the story. It can be hard to juggle an interesting setting and the plot -- but I've noticed the problem seems the worst in books that stay in one place. Much maligned though the quest is, it, or any kind of journey, gives your characters excuse to keep on moving to new neat stuff while you are pulling together the plot.
clutter and Mary Sue
Oct. 17th, 2009 05:10 pmA story needs clutter. Well, maybe not a short-short, but even a short story longer than that, and a novel even more so. Hints and bits of business that make the world seem large and concrete.
You can call it "local color" if you prefer.
Besides the benefits of world-building, it can -- if it's the right kind of clutter -- combat one tendency to Mary Sue.
You can make it clear that she's not unique and the universal center of attention.
There can be suggestion of other people's magic things as well as the marvel the character has; if your character has several, we can hear of others who also do so. There can be prophecies about other people, places, and times. We can hear of feats performed off-stage that are marvelous as the character's -- perhaps a little more, perhaps a little less, perhaps the same, according to how skilled you want the character to be, and how early it is in his career. And people can talk about things that don't feature in the story and therefore don't relate to the character.
And -- it helps with the world-building, too.
Two birds with one stone, always useful.
You can call it "local color" if you prefer.
Besides the benefits of world-building, it can -- if it's the right kind of clutter -- combat one tendency to Mary Sue.
You can make it clear that she's not unique and the universal center of attention.
There can be suggestion of other people's magic things as well as the marvel the character has; if your character has several, we can hear of others who also do so. There can be prophecies about other people, places, and times. We can hear of feats performed off-stage that are marvelous as the character's -- perhaps a little more, perhaps a little less, perhaps the same, according to how skilled you want the character to be, and how early it is in his career. And people can talk about things that don't feature in the story and therefore don't relate to the character.
And -- it helps with the world-building, too.
Two birds with one stone, always useful.
expositing what you know already
Sep. 5th, 2009 05:24 pmOnce upon a time, at a con panel, one of the audience members was holding forth on "legacy code" in terms of writing, on building on the expectations and knowledge of fantasy tropes of the audience. To which my retort was, But then you're shutting in your audience to those who are already familiar with the genre, and not drawing new people in.
Never wise to limit your audience when you don't have to.
Except that if you go too far the other way, you have a real danger losing your audience on the other side. No one wants to be lectured about stuff they already know, especially as slithering in the data often slows down the story.
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Never wise to limit your audience when you don't have to.
Except that if you go too far the other way, you have a real danger losing your audience on the other side. No one wants to be lectured about stuff they already know, especially as slithering in the data often slows down the story.
( Read more... )
foreshadowing as a second job
Aug. 11th, 2009 10:37 pmI rambled about having things do lots of things here, but after some comments on one of my Bittercon posts, I feel inspired to expand on this for foreshadowing.
Other things, sometimes you can get away with something that just advances the plot, or just characterizes. But set-up and foreshadowing are particularly hard to do. Oh, yes, this is going to be important later -- and there is no suspense about whether it's going to be important later.
Yes, you have to show the gun in Act One to fire it in Act Three. But dumping it in the middle of Act I is clumsy. Have Jack point it out in the first act as his father's, to characterize him.
Come to think of it, this goes double for red herrings. If they serve a purpose -- and a purpose equal to their development -- the reader won't be as frustrated when they don't pan out. When you don't, well, Aristotle skewer it a long time ago:
Other things, sometimes you can get away with something that just advances the plot, or just characterizes. But set-up and foreshadowing are particularly hard to do. Oh, yes, this is going to be important later -- and there is no suspense about whether it's going to be important later.
Yes, you have to show the gun in Act One to fire it in Act Three. But dumping it in the middle of Act I is clumsy. Have Jack point it out in the first act as his father's, to characterize him.
Come to think of it, this goes double for red herrings. If they serve a purpose -- and a purpose equal to their development -- the reader won't be as frustrated when they don't pan out. When you don't, well, Aristotle skewer it a long time ago:
But of all these ways, to be about to act knowing the persons, and then not to act, is the worst. It is shocking without being tragic, for no disaster follows
pulling its own weight
Oct. 5th, 2008 10:39 pmOne piece of advice I got from writing books -- when you are revising, make sure each scene does something.
When I revised, I found that the advice was entirely too weak. I found scenes that did do something, but not something enough. Not at the length they were in the story. Moving the plot along a trifle, putting some details on the characterization, showing the setting but not all three at once. They did do something, but they didn't pull their own weight -- or length, if you prefer. Whereupon I would cut them out all and replace the whole thing with a single sentence of dialog in another scene, often enough.
Always a good rule to never let something in a story do one thing when it could do two, never two when it could do three, and never three when it could do half a dozen. And this goes for scenes as well as anything else.
Set-up's a particular weak point. In fact, I would go so far as to say that setup never justifies a scene on its own. For one thing, you've got to distract the reader from it to avoid sapping tension.
But anything has to be packed together in as small a space as possible, so it uses up the minimum amount of story to pack its punch. It pulls its own weight that way.
When I revised, I found that the advice was entirely too weak. I found scenes that did do something, but not something enough. Not at the length they were in the story. Moving the plot along a trifle, putting some details on the characterization, showing the setting but not all three at once. They did do something, but they didn't pull their own weight -- or length, if you prefer. Whereupon I would cut them out all and replace the whole thing with a single sentence of dialog in another scene, often enough.
Always a good rule to never let something in a story do one thing when it could do two, never two when it could do three, and never three when it could do half a dozen. And this goes for scenes as well as anything else.
Set-up's a particular weak point. In fact, I would go so far as to say that setup never justifies a scene on its own. For one thing, you've got to distract the reader from it to avoid sapping tension.
But anything has to be packed together in as small a space as possible, so it uses up the minimum amount of story to pack its punch. It pulls its own weight that way.
