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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"
I want to talk about the way time functions inside a story--specifically within prose fiction. It's all about subjectivity. This may be the crucial difference between books and movies, actually. Time is a director's medium--in a movie time can be measured in footage, in actual minutes of runtime. You know how long it will take …
Verisimilitude is one of the most powerful devices at the author's disposal. The ability to create a world that feels real can separate a good story from a great one. Readers are much more easily drawn into a world with systems and rules they already comprehend, and characters that feel real are characters who can …
It's one of the great cliche responses to science fiction. "Earth has dozens of different biomes, but every planet in sci fi is just one thing, either it's all desert or all frozen or..." It's easy to see why this bothers so many people watching science fiction movies. It's very true that Earth has a …
Tone is the psychological setting of your story. It establishes the ethos of your world, that is to say the prevailing philosophy. It is one of the key elements in giving weight and gravity to your story. It's also very easy to get wrong. Wild tone shifts are a problem, of course, though if handled …
Creating a rich and fascinating setting for your story is fun. It's so much fun. And it can be rewarding, too. The more work you put into your setting, the more detail and depth, the more your book will come alive--if the backdrop seethes and breathes, your characters will feel more real, more anchored, and …
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DAVID WELLINGTON 