Beth Hudson's Blog, page 2

A Short History of My Short Stories

I started my writing career by writing novels. In sixth grade, I started a rather weird grand novel that didn’t go very far; in seventh grade I got to read in English class my twenty-page magnum opus that was the beginning of a novel or set of novels which I developed in my head most of the way through college. In eighth grade I started a novel which ended up with three drafts, the third of which I finished my first year in college. In college I wrote one novel, and then wrote about a third o...

Primary or Secondary: Should Worlds Collide?

So now you’ve decided to write a fantasy novel. Great! You can exercise your imagination in the fantasy genre in a way that doesn’t quite work in any other. It doesn’t mean you don’t have to be consistent with what you decide to do, but you can work free of the constraint of what can happen, and allow yourself to wonder ‘What if it could happen?’ That’s great; you’ve literally opened yourself up to writing about whole new worlds.But what world should you pick? Are you going to write about mag...

Balancing the Elements: The Circus of Juggling Proportions

One of the hardest things for me as an author is to keep elements of story balanced: Plot, characterization, setting, description, pacing, action, etc. It always seems that when I work on one thing, something else squirts away from me and I end up top-heavy on one piece while skimping on another. It’s a very frustrating experience, but one that I need to work through.I’ve read a lot of books that spend a lot of energy in one or another areas and end up losing other critical parts of their sto...

Published Too Soon: Alas Poor Yorrick

There’s a complicated issue in the writing world, and that’s when someone is ready to publish.In this day of easy self-publishing, accessible small presses, and e-books, it’s simple for anyone who can put words down in pixels to be able to publish their works. And that is both a good and a bad thing. Small presses and self-publishing give people an opportunity to share their work who otherwise might not manage to run the gauntlet of the big publishing companies; trying to get anything other t...

Babbling About Blurbs

I have said this before, but I enter a lot of Goodreads giveaways (because, free books!). I’m also constantly trying to find new books, but I don’t have a lot of money to spend on them. For this reason, I find book blurbs invaluable in helping me to narrow down which books I do and don’t want to spend time looking at. Those little descriptions of the book that tell the reader just enough to pique their interest can be invaluable in getting readers to decide they would rather read one book ove...

Update and Teaser

I know I haven’t been a consistent blogger in the past few months. In my own defense, I have an excuse: after a long time hunting, I have a part-time job, so my writing schedule is getting moved around, and I’ve had to do what I can to adjust everything.Yes, I know I should be devoting all my time and energy to writing, because “Writing is my life!” (said with suitably dramatic voice tone). But occasionally those real-world concerns, such as having a 16-year-old, a new job, and all those sill...

A Journey through Writer's Block

There is often an assumption made that writer’s block is all one thing. That also implies there is one single solution for all writer’s block. But actually it’s a complex of factors, and for each writer, different ones may be in play, and even the same reasons can have different impacts. It is, however, something many writers struggle with over the course of their careers, it’s significant, and it can be a career stopper.Like many others, I have struggled with writer’s block. I developed a so...

How Do I Know if My Writing Is Good?

This is a very tricky, multi-part question, because there is no single objective answer. It is a mixture of objective and subjective factors that are constantly in flux. What one person considers good another may consider terrible, and what themes one author may choose to write about may be themes others don’t consider worth reading about.That said, there aresomeobjective standards. Most people would probably agree that inability to string sentences together coherently is bad writing. But the...

Experience: Food for the Pen

I don’t remember when it was that I started to collect images, but it was probably some time in high school. I remember traveling with my parents, and noticing the way the light shone from the underside of white oak leaves. I thought, “If I can remember this, I could put it in a story.” And I did, in college, when I was working hard on a novel that still might get dusted off and re-worked someday. After that, I started actively noticing things around me, and wondering how I would describe the...

Keeping Characters Dynamic

One of the more frustrating things I encounter in television are characters who don’t learn from their mistakes, who don’t grow and change. There’s a reason for it, of course. Up until the 1990’s, there was no such thing as a story arc on television (with the exception of soap operas, and that’s another issue entirely). The creators of a program had no control over what episode was aired when, and as a result, if they had tried to change the characters from their experience, there would have...