One of the most powerful tools that graphic designers and visual artists use is the deployment of negative space. Sometimes called "white space", it's the use of empty space in the layout of, say, a magazine page or a painting--an area with no graphic elements at all. Negative space is incredibly good at building emphasis. …
There Are No Rules
There's been a lot of pushback lately--I mostly see it on Twitter--from authors who say writing advice focuses way too much on plot and character, on spare, lean, energetic story-telling rather than the craft of writing: the lyrical, the quiet, the rhythmic. And I'm certainly guilty of that here. My writing advice on this blog …
Your First Publication: Don’t Forget to Enjoy It
In the last week I met two people who had just published their first book. I congratulated them, but I could see the look in their eyes. One I knew all too well. Days after I published my first novel, Monster Island, I was on the floor of my apartment, so wracked with anxiety and …
Continue reading "Your First Publication: Don’t Forget to Enjoy It"
Short Story or Novel? The First Tricky Decision
Ideas come in many shapes and sizes. Some need the room afforded by a full novel to be explored. Others work better in shorter forms. It's common enough wisdom that short stories can be harder to write than novels, but it's worth exploring why. A novel is a world that your readers will live in …
Continue reading "Short Story or Novel? The First Tricky Decision"
Stumbling Through The Minefield: Expository Depth
If you're going to write genre, with rich world-building and complicated future technology and deep magic systems, it's going to happen sooner or later: you'll need to explain what a Florznap is. Whether it's describing why your hero's sword is different from what the reader thinks of when they imagine a sword, or the details …
Continue reading "Stumbling Through The Minefield: Expository Depth"
Good Advice: Character Motivations
When was the last time you had to make a big decision in your life? Was it easy? Was there one specific reason why you made the decision you did, or were you conflicted, with several factors pulling you in different directions? Typically real human beings are under the constant sway of multiple urges, desires, …
The Changing Face of the Antihero
WARNING: Lots of spoilers in this one, especially if you're not up to date on Westworld. Words, like knives, grow dull with extended use. Language changes over time with the push and pull of invisible social forces--terms of art and technical jargon, once adopted into the zeitgeist, transforms like metamorphic rock. Think of the meme--once …
Bad Advice: Flawed Characters
We are told, over and over again, that only flawed characters are interesting. That characters who are simply heroic, or competent, are boring--they make the right decisions, they figure out the mystery, but they fail to grow as people. Even worse, readers can't relate to them and will find them dull. This ignores the fact …
Finding Your Voice
Clichés are annoying and facile but they typically come into being for a reason. Something in them tends to be true or useful. Of all the clichés in genre writing I hold the least bearable, the realization that a character "had the power inside themselves all along" is one of the most nauseating. For writers, …
DAVID WELLINGTON 
You must be logged in to post a comment.