Patricia C. Wrede's Blog, page 7

The Driver’s Seat

Since before the Internet began, it seems, there’s been an ongoing argument about “plot-driven” stories vs. “character-driven” stories. By this time, there are a metric ton of how-to-write articles arguing that one is “better” than the other. And all those scare quotes are there because everybody in

Mythcon and Me

I spent last weekend mostly at Mythcon 2024, the annual convention of the Mythopoeic Society. It’s held in a different place every year, and this year, that place was Minneapolis. We regularly have a multitude of SF-style conventions here (including, but not limited to, Fourth Street Fantasy,

Writing Time

Every time I talk to a new group of would-be writers, one of the inevitable questions is “How do you find time to write?” There is no good answer to this question, because there is never enough time to do everything—the things one must do (eat, sleep,

Open mike!

It’s another open mic/mike week! Feel free to continue any discussions from previous posts, ask for better explanations or clarification, come up with whole new questions, or just catch everyone up on your latest news. I’m trying to get the house and cats set up so I

Playing around with structure

So I had half my playing around with structure post done for this week, and then Kevin said this: “Pat, do you think a preset structure likely makes a story more predictable, or are structure and predictability unrelated?” There are a couple of things to consider here.

Uses of Story Structure, Part 1

Story structure is one of those perennial topics in writing advice, and I haven’t talked about it for a while. So it’s probably time to revisit. I have two dressers in my bedroom. One was clearly made before the advent of mass production; the other was made

Knowing the audience

“Know your audience” is a piece of writing advice I hear a lot. I have never really understood what people mean by it. In almost every case, the explicitly stated reason behind giving the advice is that if one knows who one’s audience is, one can (and,

Hiring help

Would-be writers often go looking for help. Most turn to free online advice and/or groups like the NaNoWriMo community, look for people who will beta-read their work, or hunt up other writers to form a critique group (this last has gotten a lot easier with the rise

When you think you know how, but don’t

Last week, I had to put together a gadget I’d ordered. It wasn’t particularly intricate, just “ fit tab into slot and push gently until it clicks into place.” No problem. Except pushing gently didn’t work. Neither did pushing with steadily increasing effort. I finally had to

Open Mike for June!

I’m off to my 50th college reunion, so chat among yourselves! Oh, and The Dark Lord’s Daughter is short-listed for the Mythopoeic Fantasy Award for Children’s Literature. So I will be going to Mythcon in August. 🙂