I feel like I’m moving. This is what the doors into my office looked like a few months ago, when I finished Stars Fall Out. I’ve been reading and analyzing my draft, making plans for …
It’s been two or three years since I last did the Index-Card-a-Day challenge, but since I’ve been meaning to do more watercolor sketching, I decided to try it this year with time limits on how long I spend per card.
This is the result of my hands-on plot-fixing session the other day. It led to me writing a scene I came up with twelve years ago, but hadn’t figured out how to write (in part because of Stars Fall Out’s long, weird history). I plotted and wrote it in an hour-and-a-half, and it’s improved two main characters, my worldbuilding for the city of Nirsuathu, and even the ending.
I slammed my laptop shut, wished Dunkin Donuts were more conducive to victory laps, then drove to work while blasting “Outsiders” by Franz Ferdinand, which is part of my Stars playlist, and is quite a bombastic song for representing a character who’s been stuck in Nirsuathu for months.
If I ever mention “going through a pack a day,” it will probably be in reference to index cards. I keep finding more uses for them.
Index cards, tarot cards, scissors, two rolls of tape, and two plot outlines, one for reading, and one for chopping into pieces.
It’s time to fix a plot problem.
I accidentally bought a package of unruled blue index cards and then found a template online to print lines on them.
I wish I could say that it’s cheaper to do it yourself and that the quality is better. Not so much. But at least I have index cards to write my main character’s scenes on.
How it’s taken me thirteen years to write a 100,000 word fantasy novel, and why writing a book isn’t like being pregnant.
Writing fiction requires decisions among infinite options. If any given character is replaceable by any other character, or even by wind-up automata, golems, and holograms, what is to be done?
In my last post, I went over some of the issues with trying to plot an entire novel in an hour, when you don’t actually need to. That’s kind of a niche problem to face, …
Why would I until the end of National Novel Writing Month to share a plotting exercise with you? Mostly because things happened, and I didn’t get around to it earlier. But also because there’s room …
People with cats and children have it easy because they always have a fast answer to the question “What’s the one thing you’d save from a burning building?” But I’m so rotten at prioritizing and …
Because sometimes, muttering curses under your breath just isn’t enough. Sometimes, I feel thirteen again and want to scribble vulgarities all over the back of my science notebook. Maybe an A for anarchy, or a …
