Patricia C. Wrede's Blog, page 26

On Head-Hopping

Head-hopping is a mildly pejorative term for a writing technique that is usually summed up as “switching viewpoints within a scene,” followed by the strong recommendation that one should never, ever do it.

The reasons given for never, ever head-hopping range from the blanket assertion that it is “bad writing” through “it jars the reader out of the story,” “it breaks the reader’s identification with the POV character,” “it takes out too much of the mystery,” and “it confuses readers,” to “it’s...

Packing

I’m finally getting caught up after two trips and a week of house guests. One of the things that took me longest was unpacking. I dislike unpacking partly because it reminds me of how much stuff I lugged along that I didn’t need … and how many things I forgot to pack and had to buy along the way.

Starting a story is a lot like packing for a trip. What you need depends on where you think you’re going, how long you think you’ll be gone, and what you intend to do while you’re away. If you’re hea...

Technology and Process

Technology changes the way we work.

Everybody knows this, but there is nothing quite like having your Internet go out to bring it home to you. Last week’s infrastructure failure made me think about how my writing process has changed over time.

I started my first book in 7th grade, handwritten in pencil in a school notebook. Until I went off to college (with a shiny new typewriter), everything I wrote started with pen and paper – first, because that was all I had; later, because the only typew...

Technical difficulties

Apologies for the delay, but internet failure means that there will be no post this week. Regularly scheduled service will resume as speedily as possible.

Describing your POV character

Carrying on a bit further from last week: Describing your point-of-view character can be tricky. If you’re in omniscient viewpoint, you may not need to; even when the omniscient narrator has an unusual voice and decided opinions, he/she isn’t a character in the story whose physical description is relevant. In omniscient, the writer can simply describe each character, including the main one, as he or she appears in the story, in as much or as little detail as seems appropriate.

Where omniscien...

Tips on Character Description

Got back to the daily frenzy yesterday. Going from vacation straight to house guests is enough to give you whiplash, even (or especially?) when the house guests are family…

But part of the daily frenzy is the weekly blog post, so here I am. A couple of weeks ago, somebody asked about character description – tips and tricks and so on. So that’s today’s topic.

The very first decision a writer makes – usually subconsciously – regarding describing their characters has to do with what, exactly, th...

On vacation

So this week I am taking the train to east Glacier Park, which I am informed is on the opposite side of the park from the giant fires. I am currently in Portland, Oregon with my travel buddy, Beth. We spent the morning at the Japanese tea garden and rose test garden, both of which were gorgeous in different ways. In lieu of apost, here are some pictures.

View from the train to Portland, showing how smoky the air is.

300 year old bonsai at the tea garden

Koi pool at the tea garden

Roses at the...

Comments from the Writer’s Side (part two)

Generally speaking, pre-publication critical comments fall into two broad groups: reader reactions (“I started skimming right here.” “This whole section confused me.”) and specific suggestions (“Have ninjas leap through the window!” “I think you should cut the grandmother character.”) Both require some thought, but along different lines. (This is true even if it’s an editor making the comments; the only difference is that you have to listen more carefully to editors. Your friends’ advice, you...

Comments from the Writer’s Side

LizV said: Learning to judge what feedback to take on board and what to disregard may well be the hardest lesson a writer has to learn. I mostly do it by gut instinct, but sometimes it’s taken me six months to be able to articulate why a certain suggestion wouldn’t work. Hmm, maybe a future blog post on tips and tricks for making that call?

 

Let me first point out that you don’t actually have to articulate the reasons why some suggestion doesn’t work. You don’t have to justify taking or not...

Advice for Creatives

Lately I’ve been seeing a lot of advice online for “creatives”. The trouble is, almost none of the advice takes into consideration the way “being creative” actually works.

If you need to fix the broken hinge on the back screen door, it’s relatively easy to break the job down into small steps: 1. Take the door off. 2. Unscrew the hinge. 3. Take hinge to hardware store and get replacement. 4. Screw new hinge onto door. 5. Put door back up. Each of the steps is a clear physical action. Even if s...