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. …
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 …
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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, …
Subjectivity and Time in Prose
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 …
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 …
Love Stories
For Valentine's day, I thought I'd write down a few thoughts on one of the hardest things in fiction--writing effective love stories. This is one of those things that's so much easier to do in a screenplay. Of course Trinity falls in love with Neo--have you seen him? He looks just like Keanu Reeves! In …
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 …
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, …
