Patricia C. Wrede's Blog, page 9

Balancing choices

Writing a novel is a balancing act. It starts with the Big Three (characterization, setting/world-building, plot). Each of those usually has the potential to expand exponentially in several different directions at once. At the start (and sometimes all the way through the middle), it seems as if

Open Mike Again

It’s Open Mike day again, and we now have an icon to represent it!  And it’s also the vernal equinox (OK, a few hours after the actual equal point, which happened before midnight, so technically the equinox was yesterday, but close enough). Talk amongst yourselves while I

Have I Got An Offer For You…

There are some questions that all writers get, over and over and over. Anything that is repeated that many times gets very old, very fast. One of the most irritatingly common questions is the perennial “Where do you get your ideas?” But even more irritating are the

Taxes in fiction

Taxes occupy an interesting position in the human psyche: for most of us, they are both boring and scary, as well as inevitable and deeply annoying. Mostly, they are scary because people don’t know how to fill out the horrible, overcomplicated tax forms, and/or don’t have the

Bad communication

It is ironic that in these days of instant messaging so many plots still depend on two or more central characters not communicating effectively with each other. OK, a lot of pre-Internet stories depend on someone missing a phone call or a messenger, but at least someone

The underpinnings of setting

Thanks for all your good wishes! I’m feeling much better this week. This week, I wanted to talk about setting. Setting is one of the “big three” things that scenes can contribute to (the other two being characterization and plot), but most writing advice focuses more intensely

Why I’m Not At Work Today…

Here, belatedly, is why you don’t have a normal scheduled blog post today. For the last six months, one of my sisters and I have been planning a train trip from Minneapolis to Chicago, Chicago to LA, LA to San Francisco, San Francisco to Portland, and Portland

First Open Mic of 2024!

It’s another open mic! I’m out of town at the moment, so talk among yourselves or ask stuff for me to talk about when I get back next week.

Setting up the bazooka

There are two kinds of setups possible in a story: First, things that need to be established in order for the reader to understand or accept them as believable, and second, things the reader is supposed to remember without realizing how relevant they are until a surprise

Rewriting

This may not sound like a continuation of the beginning-middle-end sequence I have going on in these posts, but it is. Because this is where the writer has a chance to solve some of the problems that came up in the first draft, especially if the story