Finish the thing
Most people who start writing don't finish. It's not a lack of talent. It's not a lack of ideas. It's the sheer difficulty of pushing through when the initial…
Posts tagged: writing
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Endings that satisfy (and how to write them)
The ending is the last thing readers experience. It colours everything that came before. A great ending elevates the whole book. A weak one can ruin it. So why…
Your villain is boring
Keeping the villain theme going, I find that the antagonist is often the weakest link in SFF stories. Writers lavish attention on their protagonist, craft…
Trust your reader
One of the hardest lessons for science fiction and fantasy writers is learning to trust the reader. You've invented this incredible world. You understand its…
Films vs. Novels
I spent most of my writing life in screenwriting before transitioning to novels. I assumed the skills would transfer smoothly. They did not. The most important…
Do you actually want to write?
An uncomfortable question worth contemplating is, do you actually want to write, or have you absorbed that desire from somewhere else? The French thinker René…
Why your dialogue sounds fake (and how to fix it)
Dialogue is one of those things that feels like it should be easy. We all talk. We've been listening to conversations our entire life. How hard can it be to…
Pantsing is just writing a very long, expensive outline
There's a long-running debate in writing circles between “plotters” and “pantsers.” Plotters outline their stories in advance. Pantsers fly by the seat…
The mistakes everyone makes in their first chapter
First chapters are hard. They're ones I always spend the most time worrying at. You're trying to do everything at once: establish character, set up the world,…
The three questions every scene must answer
David Mamet — playwright, screenwriter, and famously direct writing teacher — articulated three questions that I now use constantly. Whenever a scene isn't…