I’m still studying Shirley Jackson, and if you don’t know why you can easily find out. I spent yesterday doing a scene-by-scene analysis of Chapters 5 and 6 of The Haunting of Hill House that turned into line-by-line—that’s how fast she switches gears in her most profound passages!—and at some… Read more“6 Things I Learned from Dashiell Hammett”
Tag: Dialog
3 Reasons Dialog is Important, 3 Reasons It’s Not
We’re talking about the pros and cons of the three aspects of scenes: description, action, dialog. Now, as we all know, dialog is the mainstay of modern fiction. Raised in a world of television, radio, and telephones, we as an industrialized race are familiar with nothing if not the power… Read more“3 Reasons Dialog is Important, 3 Reasons It’s Not”
21+ Things Your Characters Should Never Say
“Stand right there and break the wind.” “He was waving his arms and ejaculating at the top of his lungs.” “I have the same problem when my pants get hot.” “What a sweet kitten. So delicious!” “You’re not supposed to spread them that far apart.” “Tie it off with that… Read more“21+ Things Your Characters Should Never Say”
Bouncing down, down through holographic fiction
We’re talking about holographic fiction in three different articles on the magazine this week: Bouncing like a yo-yo. kaboing. kaboing. kaboing. Macrocosm. Microcosm. Macrocosm. Microcosm. Cosmology. Quantum physics. The holography of fiction. In the cosmology of your novel, you’ve got a Hook (big bang!), leading into Conflict #1 with its… Read more“Bouncing down, down through holographic fiction”
Pulp Rag: Explicating the gnat
Let’s explicate that piece of Carson McCullers dialog. There’s tons to learn from it, but today we’ll just focus on conflicting agendas and how she rings such a realistic, poignant note by keeping her characters firmly and clearly grounded in their separate agendas. Doctor Copeland: “I will not be hurried…. Read more“<em>Pulp Rag:</em> Explicating the gnat”
Pulp Rag: Messing with each other’s head: dialog in action
Shall we see if I can get through a whole post about dialog talking about. . .dialog? I follow Twitter. Not enough, apparently, to see everything that goes by, because lots of people use it as a mirror they glance into constantly throughout the day assuming—I guess—the rest of us… Read more“<em>Pulp Rag:</em> Messing with each other’s head: dialog in action”
Scanning far and wide
So far I have managed to spend almost the entire day wrestling fruitlessly with my website. Always a rewarding exercise. Today I’m going to highlight stuff off Twitter I wish I had time to engage in long, witty discussion about, like: Agent Jenny Bent‘s unexpected decision to hate sentence fragments…. Read more“Scanning far and wide”
Bringing you the party from Nathan Bransford's blog
How vain it is to sit down to write when you have not stood up to live. —Thoreau So I’m having a wild time over on Nathan Bransford’s blog, where my post “Everything You Need to Know About Writing a Novel, in 1,000 Words” went up yesterday. People have been… Read more“Bringing you the party from Nathan Bransford's blog”