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 …
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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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 …
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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, …
Unconventional Devices: Direct Address
Any story is a conversation between a writer and a reader. There's an unspoken agreement you make when you pick up a book--the author is going to tell you a story, maybe even try to make a point, and they know you're listening and (hopefully) paying attention. That's a lot to ask from a reader, …
Finding the Heart of a Story
It's hard enough just putting a story together. Keeping track of all the details, making sure it all makes sense. There is an endless series of decisions that have to be made before the story comes together, before it feels like it's done. But there's one question a lot of writers forget to ask along …
Second Person and Present Tense: Why and Why Not
I risk coming off like a grumpy old man in this post, which is something I'll just have to live with. It's my assertion, though, that second person viewpoint and the present tense are overused in modern writing, and that outside of certain usages they should be shunned. Let's start with second person, that is, …
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Flatness and Feeling: Three Recent Works
Note: The following post contains minor spoilers for the plots of All Systems Red, Ancillary Justice, and Blade Runner 2049. Probably the major theme of recent science fiction has been the way technology distances us from our own emotions. One of the devices authors and directors use to explore this distancing effect is intentionally flattening …
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