Worth Reading

Patricia Wrede makes some good points re: fanfiction.

Useful Advice

I usually have problems with writing advice, especially when the writers present the advice as rules, but this post has some really helpful examples of ways around "said/asked" issues that I'll forgive the comment that using said with an adverb is amateurish because I've read sentence structures with that in quite nicely written novels.

Getting Things Right

Words of wisdom from Patricia C. Wrede.

Writing Female Characters

Writer Greg Rucka on writing female characters. Very well put.

Place Name Generators

A list compiled by Paperback Writer.

Writing Process

This chart found on Boing Boing is funny yet rings true.

For Your Consideration or Amusement

I really dislike the whole "rules of writing" thing. Back in my AOL Writers Club message board days, a number of pro writers suggested that the only true rules were the ones governing grammar, spelling, and punctuation (which could be broken as needed) and the notion that words must somehow be committed to paper or pixels. So you can imagine that this article on some writing rules gave me a few chuckles.

This one really gave me pause, and a giggle:

"7. Smarten up your protagonist.
Your protagonist is your reader’s portal into the story. The more observant he or she can be, the more vivid will be the world you’re creating. They don’t have to be super-educated, they just have to be mentally active. Keep them looking, thinking, wondering, remembering."

This could be useful for some situations, ie a tight third person narration or first person narration using the protag, but if you're writing omniscient, I don't see how this is a factor. The storyteller not being the protag can reveal whatever the author wants revealed.

And that's the problem with advice about rules, or even guidelines which are somewhat better/more useful. They're often unclear. They can be confusing or even contradictory. They often need explanations and they have exceptions. Sometimes, explaining everything that would follow would take a book. If you leave off a detail, as in the narrative style or pov affecting what #7 excerpted above says, then you'll give an eager writer looking for advice a likely wrong impression. That writer might be a newbie who doesn't know yet how to use that "rule" or "guideline" in his or her own work/writing style. And the attempt to force it to work could make things worse. And that leads to frustration. Believe me, I'm the voice of experience here, though the "rules" I'd try to slavishly follow were different than in this list, mostly. Enough so that I tried to stop writing for a decade.

Here's a link that's much more fun: 100 Best First Lines.

What Rules?

Here's a good take on supposed writing rules and what a story should do. Some good advice, too.

The Dreaded Query

Advice on querying, from an editor and a writer.

100 Best First Lines

I don't think I've posted this before. It's pretty cool: 100 Best First Lines From Novels. Found on Bill Crider's blog. He's a mystery writer who doesn't blog about writing, but about books and popular culture and oddities in the news.

My favorite first line from a book I've read is:

He drank alone.

It's also the entire first paragraph of John Steakley's military science fiction novel Armor.

Need a Subtitle?

Here's a generator of subtitles for non-fiction books. I'm not sure how long this chart will be readily available on Publishers Weekly's site, but it shows how predictable non-fic subtitles have become.

The Motivator

Write or Die, for when you need a bit of a push. And no, I haven't tried it.

Too Funny Not to Share

Tom Christensen's Glossary of Publishing Terms
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The Nature of Arcs in Writing

I was looking for a particular post on the Kung Fu Monkey blog and found this review of the Star Trek 2009 movie, too, which does a nice job discussing transformative and revelatory arcs. John Rogers is a TV writer and he makes some fascinating points. There are some interesting comments, but most are focused on the merits or lack thereof, of the movie and not the writing points, and as expected from some folks in fandom, some of the comments get rather irksome. Still, this is a good springboard to thinking of the importance of heroes and character development.


And for the record, in the original Star Trek series, I thought Kirk was the hero, and the star of the show was the Enterprise, itself. :)

Suggestions for the Publishing Industry

Jonathan Karp offered his ideas in the recent issue of Publishers Weekly.

A Writers' Glossary

Too much fun, had to share.

BookRix

I haven't had much time to look at this, but BookRix seems to be aiming to do for writing/books, what YouTube did for videos/movies and flickr did for photography.

Yeah, I'm as surprised as anyone that I'm posting here.

Getting Noticed

Helium.com is a site where writers can submit articles. Members rate the posted articles in what is basically, a writing competition. There's a chance for some payment, either from sharing ad revenues from the site or through the site's marketplace where writers and publishers can find each other. No one's likely to make a living at this site, but for newbies, it can be good exposure.

Online Writing Tools

30 Online Writing Tools.

Character Bios

Went through my del.icio.us subs and found the following links.

Some reasonably useful stuff here for building character bios.

Writer's Cheat Sheets is a no-frills list of plot situations, character types, etc. Could be useful, especially if you need a jump start.

How to Punctuate a Sentence. A lot of people would find this useful.