I've spent the past 3.5 days at Continuum 7, Melbourne's own speculative fiction and pop culture convention, and I'm knackered. It's been an awesome frenzy of panels and meals and bottles of wine and talking and generally fuelling the literary flame. One of the guests of honour was the incomparable Catherynne M Valente, fantasy author and poet, … Continue reading Wrapup of Continuum 7
Where to start? The first chapter
Being in the early stages of a new novel, I've been thinking a lot about openings and first chapters. They are both essential to get right for different reasons: the opening (first couple of paragraphs) needs to immediately engage the reader, while the first chapter kicks off the story and generally provides the hook. Most writers spend a phenomenal amount … Continue reading Where to start? The first chapter
On perseverance
A short post from me today. And indeed, I'm going to cheat and direct everyone to this post from literary agent Rachelle Gardner, which came into my inbox this week and served as a timely motivational aid. Her message is about finding the strength to go on in the face of adversity, not giving up, and facing … Continue reading On perseverance
Ideas in the night
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
Ellen Gregory 