startingoutfromscrat

*LoneStranger (https://www.deviantart.com/lonestranger) mentioned some items I missed in my last installment of heroic writing and suggested that I might want to write a Narrative Flow 2 piece as a follow-up.  I may, eventually, do just that, but it occurred to me that the things I really wanted to talk about weren’t directly a part of that discussion; they were, instead, items that arose from exceptions to commonly held conventions.  I will probably return to this topic several times over the course of the remainder of the series, but for now, let’s get started with some of the aforementioned conventions and talk about how successful authors can subvert or deny them

Today I want to discuss something that I am not always very good at- something, in fact, that I am trying to improve on.  The fact that I am trying to improve on certain aspects of my writing should not, of course, be any surprise to anyone- there are remarkably few people who are good at everything, after all, and we hate those people, anyways. Here is my particular bugaboo, and it’s a doozy: I am indifferent at best about providing physical descriptions and dressing a scene.  As a writer, this is problematic because my readers do not, in fact, live in my head and have full access to everything I envision as I write.  The problem I ru

I’m going to look at a couple closely related topics, this week, all falling under the heading of powerful characters.  Now, allow me to be clear: a character that is powerful is not necessarily overpowered.  Overpowered characters are a result of mismatching a character’s power level to the story that character is placed within.  In fiction, this is always the fault of the author of the story.  If, as an author, you choose to use a character who is too powerful to make the story interesting, the only way you can reasonably blame the character’s creator is if you happen to be that person. The questions, then, become, first:

There are a few names for it: writer’s block, burnout, writer’s fatigue.  You sit at your desk and the empty page taunts you.  You might have no ideas or an excess of ideas, but, somehow, getting them coherent on the page is impossible.  In short, this is the period every writer dreads. I do not have any comprehensive, all-inclusive answer regarding how to avoid burnout, nor can I honestly claim to have a universal solution that explains how to break out of it; what I can do is relate my experiences and the tips and tricks others have passed down to me.  Hopefully, this helps someone. A common problem aspirin