Ever have one of those nights when your mind is churning churning churning as it nuts out a story? And you turn the light out, because it's time to sleep . . . but then you have another idea and although it feels like you'll remember it in the morning, you know from experience that the chances … Continue reading Ideas in the night
Changing direction
Well, fate snickered at me a week ago when, despite my earlier upbeat words about targets and optimising the wordmachine, production came to a grinding halt. Sparks flew and wheels screeched as the brakes were slammed on in response to my sudden realisation that the MS I was working on was not the MS I should be working … Continue reading Changing direction
The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms
It doesn't really surprise me that N.K. Jemisin's debut fantasy novel The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms, has been nominated/shortlisted for just about every SF award possible, including the Hugo and Nebula. It's a beautifully written tale not in the common style; in fact, the author breaks a few taboo rules and gets away with it. Yeine, … Continue reading The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms
Bad decision vs stupid decision
One of the undisputed rules of storytelling is to hurt your characters: the protagonist must either fail to achieve a goal and in so doing make things worse, or achieve that goal at a cost that outweighs the benefit. If the writer is doing it right, in most cases things spiral out of control because … Continue reading Bad decision vs stupid decision
Word goals & the wordmachine
At the moment I am working to a fairly ambitious daily word goal as I write the first draft of my current ms. It is not so much an ambitious goal on its own (and some writers I know would scoff), but to reach it five or six days in the week -- and then the … Continue reading Word goals & the wordmachine
Useful word: Subitize
I remember once having a discussion with one of my writer friends about how to deal with numbers in a group (encountered by the point of view character) when writing from an intense 3rd or 1st person character POV. She contended that if the narrative didn't state exactly how many were in the group, it became vague … Continue reading Useful word: Subitize
On writing & discipline
It is an unequivocal truth that novels do not write themselves. Irrespective of how many words a writer can produce in an hour, or how many hours in a day (or even a week) can be made available to write, the fact remains that every single word and every single minute counts. Today I am mostly concerned … Continue reading On writing & discipline
Non-linear narrative in fantasy
One of the aspects of fiction writing that I've had to work hard on over the years is how to structure a good story. For many writers this comes naturally, but I started with an interest in worldbuilding, high fantasy concepts and prose, which alone do not a good story make. I found out the hard way, … Continue reading Non-linear narrative in fantasy
Ellen Gregory 