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
Tag: Narration
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
Setting-Narrative Symbiosis
Throughout my writing tenure I’ve focused more on characters than places. Often that’s to the benefit of the stories I write but some stories call for an in-depth, sensical universe. Rarely a universe but at least a lived-in town. Invariably with my chosen focus what brainpower I expend on settings hit a cookie cutter problem. … Continue reading Setting-Narrative Symbiosis
Ode to Old Technology
On a curveball spur of energy, I decided to take out an old piece of kit. That was the start of an hour of grief and consternation from what was meant to be a few minutes of quiet enjoyment. Near a decade ago I was gifted a portable digital audio converter (DAC) from an audiophile … Continue reading Ode to Old Technology
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
How to Start a Chapter
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
Colin Klawans 