Hello, readers! Welcome to the second post of The Fourth Descendant’s bonus material. This one goes hand-in-hand with the first one. I called that one the Bones, where I described how the structure of the story came into being. This one is the Meat. It includes the subplots, characterization, and emotion that resonate with readers. The…
Welcome to the first post of The Fourth Descendant’s bonus features. These bonus posts are for those who have read the book. If you haven’t read the book and plan to, turn back now! This post contains spoilers. Come back after you’ve read it. If you haven’t read the book and don’t plan to, I’m…
Yes, the title was intentional. I borrowed it from the department of redundancy department. Telling a story in a concise way should be a goal of the novelist. I say should, because based on the length of some books and what I’ve seen both in published works and in works I’ve critiqued, this isn’t always…
Editing is a vitally important step in the writing process. I don’t know about the rest of you, but my first drafts suuuuuuck. Did you see that episode of Mythbusters where they literally took a piece of shit and polished it to a lovely sheen? That’s the editing process. Though one would hope that the…
Anyone who’s spent five minutes in a writing group has heard it: that’s telling. You need to show it. I bet the writers among us are groaning a little. Everyone else is scratching their heads. Let’s start with the basics. Telling occurs when you, well, tell the readers what’s happening. Tim was angry. Showing gives clues…
My kids were playing Jenga this afternoon. You remember that game, right? It’s the one where you remove a block from a tower of blocks and add it to the top of the tower. So the tower always has the same number of blocks. Since you’re taking the blocks from the lower parts of the tower…
Readers choose a story because they think it will hold their interest, so why do they sometimes skim or stop reading the story? There’s probably a variety of reasons, but I’ve noticed a few trends in comments in my critique group and from my own reading habits that may offer some insight. 1. Long, elegant…
Last week, I tweeted my blog post about stereotyping characters with the #MondayBlogs hashtag. The user in the pic loved it, retweeted it, and had some questions for me. This is part of the conversation that occurred. I’ve been thinking about the last question ever since. Is defying expectations the key to a good story?…
This will surprise some writers in my critique group, but I’ve been on the fence about writing on this topic. I’m such a POV (point of view, in case anyone’s lost) stickler that this should be a piece of cake. I’ve had writers in the group see my crits and ask me to crit their…
Welcome to Part 3 of my contribution to Eclecticali’s Masquerade blog party. This might be it. But I’m not sure. If you missed Parts 1 and 2, you might want to start there. The Presence James re-entered the hallway, baffled. Something had pulled Taliana into the library, but the room was empty and dark, neglected on what…
Allison Maruska 