characters | characters
May.19.2013
There are two things you’ll hear a lot when people start giving out advice on writing.
- Write what you know
- POV matters
I’m not much for cut-and-dried rules; I write what I write, and I write ‘how’ I write, but sometimes I can go back after the fact and pick out some things...
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May.18.2013
Two of my favorite characters are Miss Spinster and Judge I.M. Oldenbald. I like them because they wear the same clothes much of the time. Judge Oldenbald has lots of liver spots on his bald pate and smells musty. Miss Spinster teaches school. Their conversations are boring. Until Judge Oldenbald...
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May.18.2013
There is a method to the madness that affects writers. It's recorded on crumbling papyrus and stored securely in a box that is padlocked, encased with chains and sealed with Gorilla Glue. For good measure, a wizard and a witch cast a magical spell that cannot be broken for several centuries.
A...
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May.15.2013
Time in fiction
Time is the dark horse of fiction. Without a sense of unfolding, emergent time—time that is happening at the very moment of in the story--the reader remains outside the story, as one would stand on the banks of a river. Just as a character needs to convey...
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May.15.2013
Time in fiction
Time is the dark horse of fiction. Without a sense of unfolding, emergent time—time that is happening at the very moment of in the story--the reader remains outside the story, as one would stand on the banks of a river. Just as a character needs to convey the sense that...
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May.13.2013
My own mother has long gone to her reward (and if heaven is what we most enjoyed in life, there is a flower garden involved). I have created (I just realised) few mothers for my novels (or might a Mother Superior count). I have met and known some truly horrible mothers, but am more acquainted...
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May.10.2013
“Fill your paper with the breathings of your heart.”--William Wordsworth
Every person manages emotion in a different way. Some internalize their feelings while others vocalize them. I recently wrote how allowing children to experience all emotions, including those of sadness and...
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May.06.2013
When you read a good writer the world, for that moment, can seem no other way. Crime and Punishment is imbued with Dostoyevsky’s sense of the world. Had Tolstoy written Crime and Punishment, we would have visited a different Russia world. One might argue that...
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May.06.2013
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May.02.2013
My mini tour of the North East of England was delightful and rewarding. Authors spend so much time working alone with only their characters for company that it is always good to get out and meet readers and that is just what I was doing in Hartlepool and Whitley Bay last week, and in...
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