Yesterday I talked about the fact that as writers, we may all have very different goals depending on our personalities, ages, writing abilities, interests, and so forth. Today, I want to look at identifying the steps to take to reach your goal. Let's say you want to write a novel that will get published by [Read more...]
“I would read other books, of course,” wrote the novelist Neil Gaiman, “but in my heart I knew that I read them only because there wasn’t an infinite number of Narnia books.” My son sent me that quotation the other day. Partly because he knows I’m a big fan of the Narnia books, too, and [Read more...]
I'm having lots of warm, fuzzy feelings while finally reading a book I picked up by chance last summer. The book is Write Away: One Novelist's Approach to Fiction and the Writing Life, by Elizabeth George, author of over a dozen great mystery novels. Part of the reason I'm enjoying it is that I can [Read more...]
Why is it that when I'm not at my computer and can't write anything down, I get all these great ideas for blogs, and then when i sit down at the computer, they just evaporate as if they were only a figment of my imagination? Okay, maybe the ideas will come back… Oh, yeah. I [Read more...]
These are my opinions; not necessarily anyone else's. 1. Don't obsess on the opening. Some people spend all kinds of time working on the opening to their book when they're starting the first draft. Usually, that's a waste of time, because by the time you finish the book, you will likely have a totally different [Read more...]
I can read other people's openings and select those I think are great and those that don't work for me, but the rubber really hits the road when I have to create an opening myself. In addition, the only openings I know well enough to explain are my own. So I'll try to explain a [Read more...]
Everyone is different, and what you like to read might not be what I like. However, I expect most of us can agree on what not to do in the opening of your novel or short story. Openings that don't even begin to grab me, and which I would give a 1 on a scale [Read more...]
I have a few more favorite openings I thought I'd post. Some of them are the kind that make you feel something terrible is coming, but others promise something different – fun, for instance. The trick is that whatever you promise in your opening (suspense, humour, romance, an engaging quest), you deliver in the rest [Read more...]
I'm continuing to post openings that I consider very strong. Now, since we're all different, what grabs me may not grab you. But I'll try to tell you why they grab me. And you might learn from that. “A cold wind blew off Hanging Dog Mountain and I had no fire, nor dared I strike [Read more...]
The opening has to be the single most difficult element of fiction–especially for a novel. At the same time, you have to do something that will make people want to continue to read, while you're introducing a 60,000, 90,000, or 125,000 word book. What to do? You don't want to go too far overboard with [Read more...]
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