I should not give advice on this subject considering my penchant for never using chapters, at least not anymore. I used chapters in my early writings, liked it well enough and got enough experience to share everything mentioned after this but drifted into my own method which makes enough sense for me in my internal … Continue reading How to Start a Chapter
Writing Characters After a Character Arc
A good character arc is handled with the same deference as nitroglycerine. On paper it’s a simple combination of basic ingredients but in a writer’s unsteady hand they can destroy everything around them. Hopefully you have a plan or sufficient experience to execute a character arc combined with a great deal of effort to craft … Continue reading Writing Characters After a Character Arc
Fruitless Venture
In the halogen lit shopfront, Itkenze lingered on the many rows of guns displayed behind the iron bars and plexiglass. He’d seen many of the handguns before, pulled in front of him on the streets in his days as a garbageman. Never had one been pointed at him, a fact for which he’d been thankful. … Continue reading Fruitless Venture
Motivation for Dialog
A few years ago a fellow writer told me he had difficulty writing dialog saying it was almost foreign compared to narrative prose. I gave myself as an example and advised he try writing pure dialog without any narrative prose only keeping what could be fit inside quotation marks. The suggestion came with the classic … Continue reading Motivation for Dialog
Skateworld
I remember playing Tony Hawk games as a child and being pleasantly distracted by the gameplay. Now I look back at them, especially T.H.U.G. and T.H.U.G. 2, and it occurs to me how ridiculous that every problem encountered was resolved through skateboarding. Cops need you to track down a bank thief? Grind on the telephone … Continue reading Skateworld
Vulnerable Characters
It’s difficult in the revelry of making a character whom you love to push them, pull them, and tear them down because we see so much of ourselves in them and a sensible person wouldn’t willingly foment such a grievous challenge to their well-being. But rarely do we examine the lives of those who sat … Continue reading Vulnerable Characters
The Dividing Ceremony
Excerpt from incomplete story.
In Depth Fictional Cultures
Whether the colorful backdrop or under the microscope, culture can create fantastic engagement for the audience. Detail the many dishes in a feast and watch me start in the kitchen to form and indulge in those same treats. For the audience a habitable environment is made of interlocking components which can, in appearance, exist on … Continue reading In Depth Fictional Cultures
Historical Events as Setting
How to adapt real word events as a setting for your story.
Literary Shorthands
It’s inescapable that we want to charge through the banal parts of a story and get to the good stuff. It’s your job to break out the red pen and condense the bits which drag. But what do you lose when you make it short and sweet? Right now I’m reading some grimdark shlock to … Continue reading Literary Shorthands
Colin Klawans 