Let me paint you a picture. It might be one you recognise. You’re nearing the end of your first draft, coming to the amazing climax you’ve been eager to write. But a subtle confusion about the whole thing is taking the wind out of your sails a bit. There’s a problem. Actually, there’s a few. You were vaguely aware of them before, but now they’re rearing up and getting all in yo’ grill, refusing to be ignored any longer.
The villain is villainous, but you’re not sure why they’re being so mean; you’ve invented a fun piece of technology, but it doesn’t serve the story in any way; another piece of tech gives you a great ‘get out of jail free card’ at the end, but you’ve no idea why someone would invent it in the first place; you’ve got at least two characters you don’t know what to do with…
In short, it’s all sort of there, but nothing quite fits together properly. Well, shizzle my dizzle, you may well say to yourself, I’ve got myself in a right pizzle here and no mistake. Read more…
I’ve had a bit of business coaching during my time at a web development company. Such sessions are crammed to the brim with fragile visual metaphors, fit for purpose at first glance, but ready to shatter at the first raised hand or puzzled expression. So let’s begin with one of themwhynot – a husky team! Read more…
Recently, in one of my many (failed) attempts to get back into the flow of writing, I had to take a few steps back, think about some of the advice (a lot of the advice actually) that Matt has given in a lot of his posts, and focus a lot on building the world of my current project. I touched upon this a few weeks back when talking about back story (deep back story, I called it) but I think it’s worth opening up a little more. Read more…
Do you have a favourite pen? Did it make writing more fun?
I recently gave in and downloaded the Scrivener demo (a generous demo of thirty days – that’s thirty days of actual use, not thirty days from when you first turn it on). It’s a great program you should definitely try and I plan to rework my WIP using it.
One thing I’m noticing when fiddling with Scrivener is not how useful it is (although it is), but how fun it is. Using a well-designed application can be fun, something that is oft overlooked. And I think a lot of us could do with having the writing process made more fun for us. Read more…