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Why I didn’t like “The Sun Also Rises”
Recently, I wrote about the challenges that we as authors present our characters with. I talked about how it’s important to bring them face to face with the challenges they need, even if those are not the challenges they want. Reflecting on how facing challenges makes us (and our characters) grow reminded me of the…
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Two things religious life taught me about creative writing
I am a practicing Catholic and was blessed to spend nine months in religious formation. I decided in the end that it was not my vocation, long before taking vows or even taking the habit, but as I return to creative writing after leaving, I’ve realized there are lessons to take from religious life and…
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The challenges we don’t want (or, on self-pity)
Yesterday I wrote about the challenges we need and how, as authors, we need to make sure the challenges we give our characters are the ones they truly need. As I prepare for a second edition re-release next year, that got me reflection on one of my characters in particular: protagonist Kora Porteg in “The…
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The challenges we need
Fiction can fall flat for all kinds of reason. One major factor in such a failure can be that we’re getting plot wrong, as the writer, because we aren’t giving our characters the challenges they NEED to grow and develop. As human beings, I think that acknowledging that we grow only through challenge–that is discomfort,…
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Soundtrack to fiction
I don’t know how common this is among writers, but I imagine I’m not alone in linking music to my characters, to their relationships, and to particular scenes in my fantasy trilogy I’m hoping to re-release in a second edition next year. There are so many different associations. When I was in grad school studying…
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“Clue! The Movie,” a JFK documentary, and multiple possible endings
I just watched a cool documentary about the JFK assassination called “Frame 313” (a reference to the infamous Zapruder film.) What I liked about it is that it presents the evidence for and against 5 plausible theories to explain the Kennedy assassination. Was it Oswald acting alone? Was there CIA involvement? Was it a mob…
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Write what you WANT to know
It’s common advice to writers to “write what you know,” and that’s for a reason. What you know is where you have to start. It’s what you have. It’s a springboard to launch into plot and to make characters’ reactions to plot developments ring true. It can make writing therapeutic, among other things. But is…
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Character drives plot (the big lesson from my first novel)
My very first novel was only read by a handful of close friends. I never self-published it because it was awful. It just didn’t work. I titled it Life’s Little Jokes. I reread it more or less recently, and I realized WHY it doesn’t work. It’s a complete melodrama, but that’s not why it doesn’t…
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On trust
I watched “The Italian Job” last night. I hadn’t watched it in about 12 years or so, and had only seen it once before. Something that struck me is a saying of the main character’s father, which she repeats: “I trust everyone. It’s the devil inside them I don’t trust.” That’s an intriguing line. I’d…
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Creative Writing with the Crimson League 