As a young person, you are likely to get a lot of writing advice along the lines of “practice makes perfect,” implying that you are still young, you have your whole life ahead of you, and you should focus on “practicing” your writing, stashing it all away someplace where no one other than friends and … Read more
At Alpha this year I gave a presentation on the intersection of science and writing, with handy tips for how to do science right brilliantly and wrong elegantly. A significant portion of it was conducted in enthusiastic mime, which is sadly lost with the transition to text, but I hope that with some imagination you … Read more
So I have two Rules of Writing (so far). Be specific, be intentional.
Time to unpack that second one. I’ve broken it into several categories.
Be intentional: Everyone plays favorites.
Everyone has favorite characters and types. For a long time, almost everything I wrote involved a tall, skinny, white, redheaded female outcast. I … Read more
Everyone seems to do beginnings differently. Some people start with a single line intended to somehow encompass the entire story. Some people start mysteriously, with statements you won’t understand until several paragraphs or pages later. You can start near the end, start in the middle of the action (in medias res, like Homer!), start with … Read more
Writing unobtrusive exposition — that is, getting a story’s background information across in a way that doesn’t interfere with narrative flow — presents a unique challenge if you’re writing science fiction, fantasy, or certain types of horror. Not only do you have to worry about things like characterization and foreshadowing, you also have to make … Read more
