Eric Kent Edstrom's Blog, page 3

What About Story Structure?

Does it feel natural to you to outline your novel?

Go ahead!

I know many authors who do that. And they are very deliberate about the three act structure. They puzzle over what inciting incident will kick off the action. They scribble down their M.I.C.E quotient, or plot out the 40 beats of the Save the Cat formula. They’ll make sure they’ve plotted a false victory, a dark night of the soul, and a Hero Returns Home.

These concepts are learned through study. They help us reverse-engineer successful stories to see why they work. As we move forward in our writing careers, such learning is essential. And it requires thinking, which I’ve discouraged in every email so far.

To deepen your craft, thinking is necessary.

To learn these models, we have to apply them intentionally. We have to push through the frustration and confusion caused by molding our creative output into unfamiliar shapes.

If I gave you the assignment to write a page without ever using the word “was,” you might have to think about it. You’d have to rephrase sentences that otherwise flowed up from your subconcious. That’s a writing exercise that will train your creative mind to reach for more vivid verbs when they are appropriate.

If I asked you to outline a novel that perfectly matched The Hero’s Journey, you’d have to think about it and puzzle over it.

These are valuable exercises.

But if this is your first NaNoWriMo project, focus on training your mind to just write when you sit down to write. Embrace the Bradbury mantra I’ve been repeating in these emails “Write. Don’t think. Relax.” Trust your subconcious; it knows story. This is the fundamental skill.

If you get stuck, loop back, gain momentum, and write forward. Hit your wordcount. You don’t need to know anything more than you already know to write your novel.

When NaNo is over, study plot, character, or prose style. Do writing exercises to teach the creative mind these skills. Then get back to writing without thinking. Your creative mind will use your new abilities automatically.

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Writing Out of Order

You don’t have to write your novel in sequence.

I know of at least one writer who doesn’t know what order scenes will be in when she first writes them. Once she has a bunch of chapters, she sits on the floor and arranges them. Then she writes transitions to make them fit together.

If this sounds crazy, don’t do it.

But if you get exciting ideas about a fight, or a meet cute, or a cat-and-mouse sequence, go ahead and write it and figure out where it goes later.

I move chapters back and forth in the chronology of my novels all the time. And because I know this will happen, I often jump ahead in the story to write what I think will be a pivotal scene.

This gives me something to write toward. And that builds momentum.

If your creative mind throws up a brilliant scene (or fragment of scene), write it. Your creative mind will then happily fill in the gaps.

Writing tips, tricks, and inspo straight to your inbox. Bi-weekly except for November when I send a daily email to keep you on track for NaNoWriMo.

Chain Anchors to your Characters

Help your readers remember who’s who by anchoring them.




Photo by IgorVetushko

Here’s the problem. I read some books very slowly. I might read chapter 2 on Monday and not get to chapter 20 for a couple weeks. So that side character with Very Important Information who the detective spoke to in chapter 2 will be forgotten by the time I get to his reappearance in chapter 20.

Characters that come and go like this are important, but can also be confusing. If you’ve ever been 2/3s through a book and had to stop and say, “who is this guy?” then you know what I mean.

Anchroing is an excellent way to remind readers who a character is. That is, give them a memorable quality or two that you refer to whenever they reappear.

In Starside Saga I do this with all my side characters. Fallo has a single black catterpillar eyebrow and he’s ugly. In the early books Henley wears a knit cap, and has fiery hair. Marlow has a “salt and pepper” beard. The Cloak has a “wolfish grin” and a black cloak. Ragin Keel has white hair and pale complexion. Quinn is raven haired and is constantly reaching for her shadline dagger. Flaumishtak has hair that flows into tendrils of smoke. Nax has white chin and feet. Lop is portly and always wants food. Oly hisses at Kila pretty much every time he appears. Bazron’s scales are so black, he is an absence in the air. Klayne has a charming smile and looks like a king.

You get the idea.

For main characters like Fallo and Henley, these qualities aren’t as important in later books because readers are very familiar with them. But early on, they had to be tagged repeatedly to anchor who they were in readers’ minds.

Anchor with visuals: A scar, a tattoo, a unique quality to their posture or their hairstyle, a hat, a narrow nose, a birthmark, an absence of eyebrows, a mannerism.

Anchor with sound: a penchant for cursing under his breath, a wheezy voice, a nasally voice, the whistle of breathing through his nose, a habitual cough, difficulty breathing, a tone of certainty, uptalk, someone who speaks so softly you can’t hear them.

Anchor with smell: soapy and herbal, distincted perfume, sweat and livestock.

Anchor with taste or touch: harder to do with characters, but I would never say impossible. A man could have leathery skin (which is a texture visual that serve two senses at once) or hair as soft and light as eider down. Referring to the taste of lipstick after a kiss or even taste-related smells. “His garlicy whispers made Jack recoil and cover his nose.” Or “Mindy leaned over him at the cafeteria table, interrupting his conversation with Autumn. She snapped her wintergreen gum and whispered too loudly: ‘You asking her out?'”

That wintergreen detail would be all you needed to remind readers’ who she in ten chapters later.

To give dimension to your more important characters, give readers more than descriptive details or behaviors. You introduce them with anchors that you repeat, then begin to add new ones. But most importantly, give them a unique voice in dialogue.

A character that always makes an innappropriate joke.

A character who responds in one or two words.

A character who always speaks in compound sentences.

A character who uses euphemisms to be overly polite.

A character who expresses intolerant attitudes and leaps to violent conclusions.

A character who insults everyone.

A character who says things that rhyme.

A character who expresses weariness.

A character who uses slang, or dialect.

A character who uses clichés.

This is what makes writing fun.

So, anchors aweigh!

Writing tips, tricks, and inspo straight to your inbox. Bi-weekly except for November when I send a daily email to keep you on track for NaNoWriMo.

How do you pronounce that? (Naming Characters)

One thing that satisfies my power madness is naming characters.

I love naming characters, but here’s a secret: I don’t think about it for very long. I have never agonized over what to name a character.

I don’t know if this even counts as a tip, but when I need to name a character I just start typing consonants and vowels and see what comes out. If it’s too close to another name I’ve already used, I change a couple letters.

Here are some actual tips:

Try to make names pronounceable Now, I know I’ve been accused of coming up with unpronouncable names. Ahem, Yples. Or Flaumishtak. In my first novel I had a character called Boffoygeedanama. (In my defence, he was a bigfoot. And he went by a much easier to pronounce nickname: Grizz.)
Avoid having characters with similar names. For instance, Sauron and Sarumon might be confusing for some readers.
Don’t worry too much. Changing a name is easy with find and replace. I once named a character Beyonce. That did not make it to the final book.

Here’s where a few names in my books came from:

Harvin: a character in my first series (Bigfoot Galaxy). I needed a name. I happened to have a Green Bay Packers game on. I looked up and their adversaries for the day (Minnesota Vikings) had a talented wide receiver called Harvin. I saw it on the back of his jersey. I took it. I moved on.

Writing an early version of Thief of Sparks I had to name a ginger-haired young thief. I was listening to The Eagles at the time. I grabbed the name Henley from their drummer, Don Henley.

The monarch of Starside’s first name is Ell, which I stole from my daughter Ella.

When I named Dunne Yples (who later in the series becomes Kila’s main foe), my mind drifted over Ypres, the Belgian town figuring in WWI battles. Why? Who knows. I went with it, and the resonances (which are meaningful to me and invisible to my readers) ring in my subconcious mind as I write his story.

The donkey Tolky was originally named Tolkin, but I thought that was a bit too on the nose. So I shortened it.

The Hargothe was a phrase I typed purely in the stream of creative flow. I later read an old science fiction novel by Leigh Brackett that had a character called Hargoth! I couldn’t belive my eyes.

Terms like dragnithan, qiznithan, yoznithan, or felnithel. All of that comes from stream of creative flow. Same thing with the term “shadline” which first appeared in an unfinished proto-story that I wrote years before starting Staride Saga.

Let me know:

What is your main character’s name?Do you have a side character whose name you love?Did you have a specific inspiration or did you just think these names up in the moment?

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Holy Plotholes, Batman!

fix plotholes with reasons



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You’ve been merrily writing along, building your story day by day, and yet something about it nags at you. Some doubt.

Did you overlook a plot hole?

This fear is reasonable. After all, even if you’ve carefully outlined your book, it’s entirely possible that you’ve missed something.

Writers do get too close to their novels, such that they cannot easily see the larger picture.

My answer to this worry is simple:

Yes. There are plot holes in your novel.

There. Now you don’t have to worry about whether or not they are there.

When you go through your revision process, you’ll uncover a couple. Then you’ll fix them. Sometimes this requires major reconstruction, other times little patches. It’s part of the process.

The most troublesome plot hole is when your readers notice an alternate, lower resistance path your hero could have taken. A path that would have avoided all the drama and conflict.

Remember our discussoin about what to do when you get stuck at the 1/3 point in your novel? Have your POV character make a tough decision.

Writers sometimes leave holes in the plot when they are too tentative in forcing a hard choice on the main character. Choices that, when taken, cut off all other options.

Sometimes all you need is this:

Freedom was through that door. She could charge through and escape. The killer would never find her, never root her out of the alleyways and lanes she knew so well. This whole ordeal would be over. Except for the lifelong hangover of self-loathing she would suffer, for being a coward, for being weak.She wiped the blood from her lip with one hand and gripped the crowbar with the other. And then she crept deeper into the warehouse, more afraid than she’d ever been. But the only true freedom lay ahead, in there, beyond the shadows.

In this case above, I’ve filled a potential plot hole (“why didn’t she just run away”) by making her decision to go into danger very clear. She knows safety lies in the other way, but she’s given a reason for going forward.

Here’s another. “Why didn’t the hero use his sword to cut the rope bridge behind him? Then the ogre-skeleton could never have crossed. The whole fight that followed could have been avoided.”

Kerek staggered off the rope bridge just as the ogre-skeleton was lumbering onto it. Kerek unlimbered his sword. There were four ropes, two for handholds, and two massive ones supporting the wood planks. He raised his sword. Then lowered it. If the ogre fell, it would not be destroyed. And Kerek knew what lay at the end of the gorge below. The village. To cut the rope would subject everyone who lived there to the skeleton’s wrath.

OR

Kerek drew his sword. There were four ropes, two for handholds, and two massive ones supporting the wood planks. He quickly severed the top lines. The bridge twisted under the ogre’s weight. It fell and clung the gyrating bridge.But the support ropes were secured to tie-offs well below the ledge. Kerek couldn’t reach them. The ogre skeleton was clambering toward him like a weresloth, hanging from beneath the bridge. And it was coming fast. He ran.

Very often all you need is a sentence or two to let the reader know your POV character had a reason for their decision. It doesn’t have to be a good reason, or even particularly rational. As long as it is in keeping with who they are, the reader accepts it and goes along for the ride.

Whenever you discover a plot hole, look for a spot where you can have a character think about the alternative path and dismiss it for a reason. Better yet, have them try it and fail.

Another common problem is the continuity error. Readers sometimes call these “plot holes” when they are simply mistakes. If your main character has blue eyes in one scene, and then later has green ones, that’s a continuity error. You’ll catch most of these during revisions.

Or maybe you’ve put the same character in two places at once. I’ve done that! That takes a bit more creativity to fix, but in every case remind yourself of this: You are creative. You can fix it.

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Screeching to a Halt? Hit the Gas!

A writer’s momentum often slows right at the 1/3 point of their novel. Here’s what to do if that happens to you.



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I’m writing this on November 10th, which marks the 1/3 point of NaNoWriMo.

If you’ve been writing 1667 words/day, that means your manuscript is 16,667 words long now. And that marks the 1/3 point of a 50k word novel.

And that is exactly where many writers experience their story slowing down, or even grinding to a halt.

In the first 3rd of a novel, your main character is reacting to external events. This is where the detective is reacting to the murder and collecting info; this is where the lass becomes smitten with the laird, the shepard is chased from his village by pillaging orcs. This is where the main character is on the back foot.

If you find your writing bogging down, it’s time to reignite your creative mind and get those sentences coming again.

Your main character needs to make a decision and do something proactive.

That’s all you need to know. Don’t overthink it.

Your creative mind sometimes resists big decisions. Why? Because big choices cut off options. They force your character past a point of no return.

This is why your confusion and frustration with your novel is so often a direct reflection of your main character’s confusion and frustration with her situation.

When she doesn’t know what to do, or when everything she’s tried has failed, her motivation flags too.

For you as a writer, just as it is for your main character, this is a turning point. Marshal your will, call upon allies, urge your subconcious to look at the problem from a new angle, dig deeper. Your hero’s journey, is your journey.

And this is why I keep repeating the Bradbury mantra. “Write. Don’t think. Relax.”

Write the next sentence, and the next. The resistence you feel is your character’s resistence. Your job is to keep pushing pushing her toward the brink where she must make a choice.

She will, and the writing will race ahead.

Sign up to my Writer’s Tips Newsletter.

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Be Very Judgy of Others

When introducing characters, let your POV character’s opinion show



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One of my first emails this month* was about a powerful technique for writing descriptions. At the time I was focussed on establishing your setting.

Remember the “establishing shot” idea back on day one of this series? And remember how I said to filter setting through the opinions of your point of view character?

We can extend this idea to introducing anything in a story, including other characters.

Example of standard character description:

Ashley wore a tight fitting blue dress that fell to mid-thigh. Her hair was freshly done for a night out, wavy and full of highlights. A smoky eye and dark lip finished the look. Her clutch matched her sparkly heels. I caught a whiff of perfume as she came through the door, something at once floral and sensual.

Example of character description as opinions:

Ashley showed up at my place in one of her clubbing dresses. Satiny blue, and draping from her elegants shoulders. It clung to her curves, falling to mid thigh. It hinted at what it hid, and she wore it like liquid lingerie. Her presence overwhelmed me, tall in her sparkly heels, dark of eye with overpainted lips, all pouty. Everything about her suggested staying in rather than going out. The air that followed her through the door was scented with rain, but her floral perfume hinted at moonshadowed blossoms. She was in bloom—an intoxicating, elegant violet—rare, and wanting to be plucked.

Ahem. Whew. I don’t usually write descriptions like that. Excuse me. I need a drink of water, or something.

So you see how the point of view character (in this case the first person “I”) can reveal so much more when we allow their opinions to filter descriptions.

Same Ashley, different POV character:

Ashley showed up at my place in one of her scandlous “going out” dresses. I wouldn’t even call it a dress! I wore more to bed on my wedding night than that little blue wrap. And the way she’d painted her face, with those raccoon mask eyes and bruised lips. She could tell I was disapointed in her. I know she could because she tried to loom over me in her cheap heels, as if to dare me (her mother!) to say something. Anything. I kept my mouth shut and tried not to sneeze on her overpowering perfume. I complimented her purse. Inwardly I prayed for her. But there’s only so much a mother’s prayers can do for such a girl.
You will notice that descriptions filtered through your point of view character’s opinion reveal as much—or more—about the POV character as it does the character they are seeing.

Isn’t that beautiful? The reader loves this, because they get to sit way down deep in your POV character’s world, which makes it more real and much more fun.

This post is part of a month long, daily email series for my Writers Group Newsletter. Join here. Daily happens only in November. The rest of the year is bi-weekly.

Compelling Descriptions are Full of Opinions

One of the biggest challenges of writing a novel is dealing with descriptions.

Most people get bored reading long descriptions of rooms, or castles, or women’s ball gowns. Most writers are bored writing such descriptions.

This is why many modern writers skip over descriptions entirely. But this can result in a bland world, or a sense that the action is happening in a white room with no furniture.

Our job as writers is to “invoke” the world. So here is my guidance:

When the events of your novel move to any new setting, whether it’s a bedroom, a concert hall, or battlefield, use the idea of an establishing shot.

This is from film and TV. It’s that wide shot that shows the apartment building on Friends, or the wide panning shot of the Shire in LoTR, taking in the green grass, the little road, and the hills with doors in them.

Simply start your scene with an establishing shot.

So how many words does it take? It can be a sentence, a paragraph, or a page, depending on how you handle it.

And this gets to my second tip:

When you’re writing, get yourself mentally in your character’s point of view. For descriptions of all types, tell the reader what the character notices about the environment. Tell us what the character’s opinion is.

And this is key: setting is opinion.

Example of standard description:

Grandma’s bedroom was square, ten by ten, with a window overlooking a back yard. Jen saw a tree back there, an oak. The walls were red and the bedspread was a garish, neon floral. Grandma had been colorblind, and her stitching had been uneven, and that was before her stroke. The closet door was one of those sliding, folding things, but it was off its track and now hung open on one side. Jen saw clothes on the floor inside. And it stank as if a cat had died in there. Jen left.

Example of setting as opinion.

Jen felt claustrophobic the second she went into the boxy little bedroom. A sinister oak crowded too close to the window, blocking out what little light oozed through the autumn clouds. The crimson walls clashed with the weird floral bedspread. Tulips and daffodils, but stitched in garish neon green and orange. She knew grandma was color-blind, but she could not help but see madness in the embroidered flowers. Her eyes went to the closet, where the folding door hung askew on one side, as if it too had suffered a stroke. Inside, on the floor, lay a wadded nest of old clothes. And from that shadowed maw came the stench of cat pee and decay. Covering her mouth, Jen retreated.

Notice how the second description is longer yet much more compelling. This is because it reveals character through Jen’s opinions. It also reveals more about her grandma. The combined effect is to invoke setting more completely. There is mood and tone and atmosphere. But the primary technique is reporting setting through the opinion of the point of view character.

Practice this skill and you’ll soon discover that establishing your setting helps you understand your character better and helps generate plot ideas.

“Write. Don’t think. Relax.” —Ray Bradbury

Stomping on Landmines

Don’t let fear of grammar errors or style “don’ts” stop you.

The landmine problem kept me from writing for decades.

Yes. Decades.

I didn’t write because I was worried about the landmines of grammar, prose style, adverbs, tropes, clichés, passive verbs, and on and on.

I didn’t want to embarrass myself. I didn’t want to write a whole novel just to have some editor laugh at me, or worse, dismiss my work entirely.

I gained this fear by reading about all the mistakes beginning writers make. It was so overwhelming, I simply gave up before starting.

But here’s the truth: fiction does not require us to obey the textbook. Artistic license allows us to punctuate according to our own style.

Grammar is a convention. And following those conventions is good, because it helps the reader understand. But read any popular thriller. They are filled with fragmentary sentences. It’s is a stylistic choice, to create a specific effect.

So let the words flow how they will. Allow them to cast their spell, to manifest your story in your own mind. If you’re not confident with commas, don’t worry too much about them. An editor will suggest changes later to make sure you’re achieving your goal.

Write by ear. Cormac McCarthy rarely uses commas at all, and he doesn’t even put quote marks around dialogue. I don’t reccomend that, but it’s a valid choice.

Your prose style will develop over time. And you will learn the fundamentals of grammar by having your manuscript edited by a copyeditor.

Never stop writing just to look up a grammar rule.

Why do I say this?

The most important thing is the story, not the manuscript.

You are going to revise your manuscript later. You will take care of punctuation; you will trim the excess and add in details as you shape your story. You can study grammar rules at a different time.

Writing should be discovery. When you begin tinkering with the buts and bolts of a manuscript you switch over to inventing. That sort of thinking sees errors and mistakes where there aren’t any. Pretty soon you’ve broken a story that was working just fine.

The first thing writers break is their own unique voice. They apply The Elements of Style like an Instagram filter and suddenly their writing begins to sound “professional.” That’s not good. Because “professional” means boring.

So go onward bravely. The landmines are not real.

Want more of my November writing tips, tricks, and inspo? Sign up!

Pen Addict: Affordable picks to get you hooked

I’m not even ashamed of it. I love pens and pencils and empty journals and planners and pretty much anything that involves putting words onto paper. (Typewriters? Oh, yes indeed!)

If you get the pen bug, you might start getting pulled into ever more expensive and exotic choices. But if you simply want really good inking experience, here are my recommendations.

The Pilot G2 Shown here in a variety pack of colors. My favorite version of this one is the black ink. These provide a silky smooth writing experience, with good coverage and no skips.

I tell you a secret: I hate the red one. Not because there’s anything wrong with the way it performs. I just hate red ink. It means I made a mistake or I wrote a typo or a grammatical error. Or that I did any math assignment ever.