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. …
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 …
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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, …
Backstory and Front-Loading
Your characters didn't appear out of the ether, newly created on page one of your book. At least, they shouldn't feel like they did. They had lives before the story starts, families, jobs, religious affiliations, pets. If you're going to make them feel real to the reader, you need to know their backstories. You need …
When You’re Stuck: Things to Try
There are days when you just can't write. You can have the world's best idea, be sitting in the world's best writing chair... and nothing comes. When it feels like every sentence you put down just takes you farther from what you wanted to say. And you know what? Sometimes there is no solution, except …
The Dreaded Infodump
Exposition is a crucial part of any story. It's how you create your world and how you share it with your reader. Yet it's also a great way to bring your narrative flow to a crashing halt and bore anyone who was kind enough to pick up your book. Writers often decry the "infodump", the …
Three Act Structure
There are, of course, an infinite number of ways to write a book. In these articles I've been outlining how I do it, because that's what I know to write about, but there are no binding rules, no arbitrary guidelines. That said, there are some structural... suggestions that can benefit almost any writer. Stories can …
Pacing: Good News and Bad
Pacing might be the most important skill a writer can develop. Pacing is the tempo of your story, the sense of time passing, the sense of things happening in a smooth, organic order. Pacing is everything. Pacing is crucial to plot. It's how you build suspense--how you make your reader care about what happens, and …
DAVID WELLINGTON 