Exposition Exposed
I’ve just finished reading the first book in Robin Hobb’s latest addition to her Elderling Realm universe: Dragon Keeper*. Hobb uses a lot of exposition in this book (which possibly explains the complaints by readers reviewing on Amazon that this book is “slow moving”). The pace didn’t bother me, though, and I was quite interested […]
More on Point of View
I’m still reading Inkspell* (don’t laugh! I’m also reading Life of Pi* and Playful Parenting* and I only get a few minutes a day to gulp down a page or so), but I’m finding this a very interesting example of a multiple viewpoint book. It is addressing a lot of issues I was exploring in […]
Easy Does It
I’ve set myself a ridiculously easy daily writing goal. I’m a little ashamed to admit what it is: 100 words. Yes, I know. I’m a breastfeeding mum; give me a break. But it’s working. I can do 100 words even on a really busy day. I can squeeze it in somehow. And I’ve thrashed that […]
Standing Alone
Since I made the decision to turn my trilogy into a stand alone novel I’ve been trying to choose between the options of interweaving the three related stories or running them separately as Parts 1, 2, and 3. My heart likes the former. It will make for a fuller, rounder story, and it will take […]
In Mind
So this is what I have in mind for HearWriteNow: I’ve ditched the idea of the email newsletter / ezine that was “Lateral Ezine” and instead I want to turn HearWriteNow itself into an online writers’ magazine. Lateral was really just an email to let people know that a new article was up; I wanted […]
Delightful Deletions
I broke something on my website. I really liked the way My Fictional Life worked on WordPress and love this theme by Sayontan Sinha. So I was attempting to merge My Fictional Life with the rest of HearWriteNow and do a slow migration of the whole site onto WordPress, but too much code got stuck […]
More Book Buying Options for Australians
Following on from my post about The Book Depository, I’ve found two options based in Australia that offer free shipping within Aus. These are Emporium Books* and Borders. I haven’t tried either, so I can’t comment further than that, but they might be worth a comparison if you’re on the hunt for a particular title. […]
Novel Revision
I’m now doing a Novel Revision course in parallel to the Writing Career Course. While the Writing Career course is helping in places, the novel I need to fix is completed so this makes much more sense. The other novel (now that I have been able to see how to convert this into the first […]
Literary Fiction versus Popular Fiction
My dear friend Lauri over at Thoughts From Botswana wrote an interesting post on Literary Fiction versus Popular Fiction. These are my thoughts in response: For me plot is art. Characterisation and character relationships are art. There is a real art to constructing a work of fiction that both shows and tells a compelling story […]
Villainitis
I struggle to maintain my villains at a “pure evil” level. I’ve started a couple of books intending to introduce a gleefully wicked antagonist only to find myself understanding my character’s motives. It’s only a short step from there to discovering that your villain actually cares about something or someone, that he has a soft […]