will finish this darn story

By Wednesday. It’s a short story, entitled “The Watcher.”
Yes, I’m still “blocked.” But I’m finishing it anyway, even if it’s terrible in the end. Because really, it’s time to move on.
One thing about the current protagonist is that he reminds me of the protagonist of a story I wrote previously. Not the characterization, since they are drawn very differently, [...]

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on heroes and villains

Andrew Rosenberg over at The WriteRunner has a thought-provoking post about the quality that most distinguishes heroes from villains in fiction. He decides it’s something simpler than good vs. evil, and he uses examples from real life to show what he means.
It’s made me think about my own heroes and villains from a new perspective, and even more so since I’m [...]

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gender differences in writing?

A while back I mentioned in a post that the majority of my POV characters tend to be male. And so it is with my two most recent stories. I don’t know why this is, other than to say that the character whose point of view I use is simply the one that seems right for [...]

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more on character names: and prince what’s-his-name journeyed for three days, and at last he arrived at that-place-with-the-B

Earlier this year I wrote a post about some of my thoughts on coming up with suitable character names. Now I have something else to say on this subject, and it’s really more of a pet peeve: It’s when authors of science and fiction and fantasy novels invent names for places and characters that I, as a reader, am not sure [...]

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opposite gender pov characters, and a new rejection

I’ve noticed that in my short fiction, I usually write from the POV of a male character. In fact, of the stories which I’ve sold, 12 of them have had male POV characters, 3 of them female  POV characters,  and 1 had a POV which shifted between a male and female character. That’s pretty overwhelming, but [...]

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showing character motivation

One of the problems (actually, the biggest problem) I’m having with the revision project is the whole issue of character motivation. The protagonist’s actions get him into trouble, and as the author, I know why he does what he does (or at least I thought I did), but I don’t think it would be clear to a [...]

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plot vs. character

I’ve noticed that my short stories tend to be very character-centered, but with my novel it’s all about the plot, that marvelous and surprising unfolding of events.
Of course I want both of these to be fully developed – it’s only that my focus seems to shift according to the length of the work. I wonder if [...]

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what’s in a name?

Sometimes, naming a character is fun. Sometimes it’s a chore to find a fitting name.
Yesterday, I encountered two opposing points of view on the subject of names.
On one hand, there’s the position that the name becomes the character no matter what. Maybe: there are a lot of stories I’ve read where I remember the general events, but [...]

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character names

I kept my baby-name books from when my kids were born, and I use them for inspiration in naming characters. In cases where I have a completely made-up world, I usually need to invent names.
Pop-Quiz: Test your knowlege!
These are some of the male names from my w-i-p. What do they sound like to you? Can you match them [...]

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where my ideas come from

Many (though not all) of the ideas for my fiction originate as a visual image in my imagination of a single character. These images are emotionally compelling, and I usually feel that I want to discover and tell the story of this character.
For example, the image of an elderly man, standing outside, looking nostagically [...]

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