Category: characterization
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Friday’s Findings: Tension
What is tension in fiction? It is the anticipation, the dread, of unknown events or other elements in a story that compel a reader to keep going. Ask this question for each of your characters: What are you afraid of losing the most? The answers should give you an ample supply of tension, conflict, and…
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Friday’s Findings: Audio Annotations
“The point of being a god is to have the joint running to your specifications.” -Guy Vesten, The Hungry Gods by Adrian Tchaikovsky This is just one of several quotes I got from the novella I listened to today, Tchaikovsky’s The Hungry Gods (THG). It wasn’t very long – only five hours – and I…
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My Favorite SF&F Shows, Part 8
I didn’t want to subscribe to AppleTV+. Just one more stupid streaming service to take my money every month. However, I kept seeing all these great science fiction shows on this channel, and some of them were based on books I had read. My friends kept saying, “Subscribe and cancel when you’re done.” So, I…
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My 50k Novel in 30 Days: Final Daze
During my last three days of doing this unofficial NaNoWriMo, I wondered about my writing craft process for the future… Day 28 It is a sad day for me. The website for NaNoWriMo has vanished. Ironic it happened while I’m in the last week of one of the best 50k words in 30 days I’ve ever done.…
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Friday’s Findings: Character Viewpoint and Description
I am a technical editor for an airline, and recently my department moved from one building to a new one. I love my new office. Everything is new and clean. It’s located in an airplane hangar, so I can just step away from my desk and go see the airplanes up close as the mechanics…
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Friday’s Findings: Five things I’ve learned in five years, part 2
A few weeks ago, I named five things I learned about the writing craft in the last five years, which are things about the actual writing process. As I came up with that list, I serendipitously came up with items that didn’t relate directly to the craft but to the writing life. These would be…
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Friday’s Findings: Writing Lessons from One Piece
I watched the new Netflix series called One Piece over the Labor Day weekend. I recommend it if you’re looking for both humor and drama. Being a pirate-themed show, One Piece has a lot of swashbuckling fun. Monkey D. Luffa wants the One Piece, a treasure hidden by the executed pirate Gol D. Roger. He…
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Friday’s Findings: Can AI Write a Novel?
Apparently, Artificial Intelligence can write a novel. The question is: can AI write a good novel? To me, good novels require human emotions. Characters need to make decisions in their fictional exploits. And decisions, even those based on just the facts, require emotions to be made. Can AI make decisions as complex as humans? Can…
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Friday’s Findings: Vision Boards and Facial Cues
My Seven writing rules – JMJ Williamson Not so much ‘rules’ as they are ‘preferences.’ How to Write a Good Villain: 6 Scenes Your Story Needs (thewritepractice.com) Some good suggestions for scenes to make your antagonist more real to the reader. Fiction University: Give Your Story Meaning with Inner Conflict and Theme (janicehardy.com) Some good…
Andrew M. Friday 