Steven R. Southard's Blog, page 77

Better Writing through Chemistry?

If you consume alcohol or mind-altering drugs, will that improve your writing? Many people think so. Supposing it’s true, it’s nice to have that short-cut to greatness available, isn’t it? Why struggle to choose the right words while sober or clean when you can snort, inject, or imbibe your way to literary greatness?

The connection persists because so many of the top writers, it seems, had a reputation for using drugs or alcohol. The two that spring to my mind are Edgar Allan Poe’s use of opiu...

Why You’ll Love the Snowflake, Too

The snowflake I’m blogging about today doesn’t have much to do with winter weather, but instead a writing method developed by author Dr. Randy Ingermanson. I won’t go through his method here, since he does a much better job describing it on his site than I could, but I’ll just discuss why I like it and why I think you will, too.

First, a snowflake is a good metaphor for a story (no two alike, many quite intricate and beautiful), but that’s not how Dr. Ingermanson means it. He’s referring to th...

The Modular Author

I’ve written before about the conflict between the way readers want authors to be, and the way authors’ muses want them to be. Now I’ll carry those thoughts forward to conclusion.

As a reminder, readers want you (as an author) to be consistent in genre and style so when they pick up one of your books, they know what they’re getting and aren’t surprised. On the other hand, writers’ muses are creative and get bored with sameness; they’re always seeking something new and different; it’s always po...

Character, Plot, or Setting—Which Comes First?

Today’s question is about whether story-writers think about characters, plot, or setting when they first conceive the idea for a story. If you’ve written fiction, or thought about doing so, which did you start with?

Of these three story elements, perhaps character is most important to the reader. For readers, vivid and interesting characters linger in the memory long after plot or setting details fade. Some writers form a complete mental image of one or more characters, and then wonder what to...

Is Fiction Dialogue Different from Plain Old Yakking?

Dialogue through verbal speech is as important to your fictional characters as it is to us flesh-and-blood folks, though for somewhat different reasons. For both fictional and real people, speaking is the most common form of communication, and communication is, of course, not only vital but is something we humans do a lot.

However, real people engage in spoken dialogue for only a few reasons, and among them are:

to inform
to persuade
to establish a relationship
to argue
to direct or command

When our...

What the Web Wrought on Writing

We still live near the dawn of the Internet Age, of course, so it’s perhaps a bit early to assess the web’s impact on writing. But here goes, anyway…

First, it’s instructive to recall the past technological developments that aided fiction writers, or allowed them to better connect with paying readers. Here’s a partial list: libraries, bookbinding, printing presses, mass production of paper, mail delivery, bookstores, dictionaries, typewriters, computer word processors, and eBooks. Each of thes...

Writin’ for Nuttin’

Should you always write to be paid, or should you (at least sometimes) write for free? Here I’m talking about complete fictional stories, not blog articles or story excerpts.

The answer for you will depend on your situation. I’ll offer some guidance, some basis on which you can make your decision.

There are those who say you should never write for free, and their reasons are compelling.

Writing is effort, and you deserve to get paid for it. In one sense it does look like writers are producing so...

A Format for Every Market

You prepared your manuscript with care, followed the market’s submission guidelines, and sent your story along. Sad to say, it got rejected, but you got over that and decided to send it to the next market on your list. Now you’ve found the new market requires stories submitted in a different format. In fact, it appears there are almost as many manuscript formats as there are markets! What’s the deal?

In truth, there are some standards shared by a few markets. These include William Shunn’s “Pro...

Gypsy Shadow Publishing – 3rd Anniversay Celebration

You should enter to win the prizes being offered by Gypsy Shadow Publishing as part of the celebration of their 3rd anniversary. I’ve never promoted something like this on my blog, but I’m very grateful to GSP for publishing five of my stories so far, with possibly more to come. Also, the prizes are great! There are two gift baskets being given away. In addition, they’re offering a whole bunch of free e-books.

Did I say free e-books? Yes, and they include books written by yours truly.

Are you s...

How Well Do You Really Know Your Characters?

In a previous blog post, I wrote about creating characters. One bullet point I made was that you, as author, should get to know your major characters. Let me expand on that today.

To review, your goal is to create believable, interesting, and memorable characters. Also, to some degree, your characters should be representative, or recognizable; readers should be able to identify with at least some aspect of the characters, having that aspect themselves or having witnessed it in other real peopl...