If you’ve ever written consistently you’re going to find yourself killing someone about one week in. No matter what genre, eventually someone dies. Like death itself, it’s natural and inevitable. But that doesn’t make it easy, unless you don’t care. For this character I’ve got on the chopping block now, I’m getting chewed up. That … Continue reading Death of an Innocent Character
Category: Advice
Suspense in Fiction
Readers caught in the grips of suspense are kept locked upon their seats permanently so they may find answers to an unyielding question hopefully on that very next page. The means to obtain such an effect is through the proper use of information in your narrative. Boiled down to its basic components, all information reverts … Continue reading Suspense in Fiction
Travel in Fiction
Here, There, Everywhere, and Back Again
How to Edit Your Weaknesses
One of my standard phrases pertaining to writing that I’ve absorbed into my philosophy is, “I write my strengths and edit my weaknesses.” It’s a luxury of a non-live, correctable activity that if something is sub-par or simply doesn’t work, it can be fixed later. No basketball player can undo a three-point airball and move … Continue reading How to Edit Your Weaknesses
Clearing Out Infodumps
Even with the best intentions, you’ll write yourself into a predicament expounding on your story’s background information. Sometimes it’s necessary as you’re attempting to figure out what’s happening in your story because rambling about the broader facts and setting your characters contend with helps clear up where the story goes next and why. Actions gain … Continue reading Clearing Out Infodumps
Infallible Characters
Except in the eyes of some religious devotees and in the mirrors of narcissists, no one on earth is infallible. Everyone makes mistakes. I used spell check on narcissists ten seconds ago. What allows you to progress as a person is the ability to recognize why those mistakes arose from your own failings and work … Continue reading Infallible Characters
Low Budget Novels
Monetary restrictions have been a driving force of creativity in many artistic fields. In film especially the limitation summed up in the expression, “If you want ten explosions, you have to make ten explosions.” The infinite imagination pulled down to earth by the finite resources at hand. Scenes are rewritten. Cinematography techniques modified or invented … Continue reading Low Budget Novels
Setting Up the Bar
I want to run through an exercise for something I’m not particularly versed in. Though that statement gives me an easy out, as I often sit on the writer scale’s far discovery end I don’t put much thought to new environments when I’m building on the preexisting characters. Locations and places have always been barebones … Continue reading Setting Up the Bar
Vignettes and the Baton Pass
When my writings turn exploratory or freewheeling, my favorite story structure is the vignette. Unhindered by ongoing plot bloat, naturally disposed to changes in tempo and pacing, the vignette is a neat little tool for when you want to write a varied, shifting story featuring a pantheon of characters and their different perspectives. Every input … Continue reading Vignettes and the Baton Pass
Sidequests in Fiction
Mainlining the Side Paths Despite how much I hold up the theoretical streamlined story with no filler as an ideal to be strived for at every creative attempt, I’m not adverse to sidequests in principle. Like breaking from a busy day at a pondside bench, sidequests can be a pleasant distraction or moment for rumination. … Continue reading Sidequests in Fiction
Colin Klawans 