Society can give its young men almost any job and they’ll figure how to do it. They’ll suffer for it and die for it and watch their friends die for it, but in the end, it will get done. That only means that society should be careful about what it asks for.* When writing or publishing […]
Category: publishing
Wanting and doing
Characters want, therefore they do; desire drives the action. It is what makes characters real, and it is the writer’s job to connect the characters’ wants to the reader’s own longings. Like characters, readers want justice, love, redemption, freedom, connection. Desire propels. Mistakes, irrevocable blunders get made. The story quickens. But while characters want things […]
The feel of a book
When an author makes you feel, she has you. I remember reading a manuscript, enjoying the characters, and wondering where the story would lead. Then, in the middle of a conversation, one of them cocked his head. Something wasn’t right. A noise that shouldn’t be there. I felt a chill. Suddenly, those wonderful characters — high […]
Epic creative tension
Hollywood is rediscovering the Bible. (You can read about it here.) They have this to say: Hollywood has the best storytellers. And religion has the best stories. Well, OK. And then there’s this: There’s creative interpretation that goes into things that aren’t directly addressed in the underlying material, and so you always run the risk […]
The geography of fiction
Novels are tricky. Is upbeat artificial? Is dystopian faithless? Are plot line and characterization exclusive? Robert D. Kaplan’s new book, The Revenge of Geography, hints at the link between realistic characters and complex scenarios: Geography is common sense, but it is not fate. Individual choice operates within a certain geographical and historical context, which affects decisions […]
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