I asked the warden to let me see you. Read the rest of this entry »
Posts Tagged ‘fiction’
The Swan (and how to end your short story)
In Fiction, Writing on April 26, 2012 at 1:32 pm
A swan (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
I stumbled across a story of mine this afternoon, one I wrote a while back, and decided to post it — not just because I like it (it’s about a man who wants to eat a swan, not to spoil it), but because it raised a couple general questions for me when it comes to writing. Read the rest of this entry »
Great characters: Perfecting imperfection
In Writing on April 25, 2012 at 2:28 pmIn yesterday’s post, I talked about how you should be willing to put your characters through Hell – to punish them, hurt them, and generally make them wish they were dead (or, in some cases, just actually make them dead). This is important even for your best characters, your favorite characters and your most likeable characters.
But what does ‘likeable’ mean here? In everyday life, ‘likeable’ is more or less synonymous with ‘nice.’ Someone who is likeable is someone who does nice things, who says nice things and thinks nice thoughts. The best characters, though, are generally not entirely likeable in this sense. If yesterday’s post was about killing your darlings, today’s post is about making them deserve it just a bit. Read the rest of this entry »
Kill your darlings (or at least make them wish they were dead)
In Writing on April 24, 2012 at 12:19 pm
Medieval torture rack (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
The advice to ‘kill your darlings’ or ‘kill your babies’ is dispensed so often in writing circles that it ranks among the most over-used writing clichés (right up there with ‘show, don’t tell’).
What it means is that you need to be ruthless in your willingness to cut sections of your writing that don’t work to strengthen it — even if it’s some of your favorite stuff. If it doesn’t serve the piece overall, it’s got to go.
But I like to take this advice in a second way: as a directive to treat your favorite characters just as ruthlessly as your favorite sentences. You need to put them through Hell, run them through the ringer, and — if it serves the piece as a whole — kill ’em too. Read the rest of this entry »
Defeating writer’s block: You gotta have faith
In Writing on April 18, 2012 at 9:02 amEvery writer will find him or herself, now and then, faced with the dilemma of not knowing what to write. Monthly, weekly, maybe even daily, we face bouts of writer’s block of varying severity — but whether it’s just a five-minute blank or a month-long drought, the means of overcoming it is simple: you gotta have faith.
(Photo credit: Wikipedia)
I’m not talking about George Michael’s soul-stirring*, life-affirming, guilty-pleasuring (that sounds wrong) 80s hit — I’m talking about the belief that, no matter what, no matter how blocked you may be, you will always, in the end, come up with something incredible to put on the page. Read the rest of this entry »
Two really, really, really long sentences
In Writing on April 13, 2012 at 4:23 pmSometimes in writing it’s important to challenge yourself to stretch your abilities, even if what you come up with, at the end of the exercise, is a horrible, steaming pile of mangled syntax and mixed up metaphors. Nobody actually needs to be able to bench press 700 pounds (except for those women who save their children from, you know, crashing spaceships and such with incredible feats of superhuman strength) but athletes still do it because it helps them condition themselves in general.
That’s where today’s exercise comes in: writing really, really, absurdly long sentences.
Short Story Contests: May (2012)
In Writing on April 10, 2012 at 3:40 pmA great way to keep yourself writing, get some feedback and (we can dream, right?) earn publication and cash rewards is to enter contests. So for quick reference I’ve collected a few short story contests in one place with deadlines coming up next month.
Check them out — click the links for full submission guidelines — and good luck!
Transmogrified: ‘My Humps’
In Fiction, Writing on April 6, 2012 at 2:26 pmLet’s start with a definition (for readers of yesterday’s post, not usually the best way to start):
Transmogrify
verb (transitive)
To change in appearance or form, especially strangely or grotesquely; transform
For writing students (or maybe only to students of a certain Professor Randy Nelson at Davidson College) a transmogrification is also a writing exercise where you take a piece of writing, maybe a poem or a newspaper clipping or some song lyrics, and rewrite it in a completely different and unexpected form.
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