I struggle to write dialogue. I’m not a particularly talkative person in real life, at least with most people. And dialogue should, in theory, serve to either move the story forward or reveal it. Because I struggle, I’ve read a number of guides that promised to teach me how to write dialogue. Some of...
Most cultures have specific symbols that are used throughout that culture and understood by its members, such as a dove for peace and fire for destruction. These symbols are not universal, though: symbols depend on context for their meaning. In writing, we have the privilege of creating our own symbols. These need not be...
In narrative writing, there are always at least two perspective’s: the writer’s and the reader’s. Works with one first-person narrator may add only this third perspective, but writers can add more perspectives without adding more points of view. Let’s suppose we’re writing a single first-person scene involving more than one character. The main character...
I’m not writing epic fantasy, so I couldn’t populate towns and countries the the number of dead (no, I still haven’t read or watched Game of Thrones, but it’s got a reputation). That doesn’t mean I don’t have characters that either die during the book or have died before the book began. Some of...
Some storytellers are so captivating that we don’t see the flaws in the story until we have a “refrigerator realization”, where you’re standing in front of the refrigerator and realize that there was a gaping plot hole. Usually, you don’t care, because you were entertained. For most of us writers, though, it’s important that...
Most novels and narrative non-fiction will have characters/people who aren’t main characters. If you’re creating a video game, then you might need to know a lot about these characters to let players interact with them, but for narration the needs are much simpler. Here’s how I create them. First, I need to know what...
Characters begin in real observation, no matter how far they may stray from that initial spark. For example, in one of my books, an important character is a talking paper giraffe. That giraffe began in two places: in a painting I saw and in some timid people I know who have performed acts of...
It’s not Garamond. Let’s be clear about that. But where do book ideas come from? Some writers seem to have endless amounts and others struggle to come up with a single one, but all book ideas–I believe–come from answering one of a few questions. (1) What if? “What if” books are often fantasy (“What...
In Greek mythology, the Muses were a set of sisters who would inspire artists and scholars in different disciplines, such as dance of epic poetry. Nowadays, I’ve heard everything from a cup of coffee to a loved one being called a muse. If by muse we mean only something that inspires us to write,...
Sometimes I joke that I’ve written something as a story because it didn’t have enough content to be a novel or a poem. Novels and poems represent extreme ends of length for narrative forms (not all poems are narrative, but some are), and as a result I build them differently from each other. Most...