I’d like to go back to the quotation by Lyn Hejinian that started this arc of blogs. I, for one, feel the double pull of conciseness and expansiveness. But they do not need to be at odds with one another. In fact, your personal balance of these two helps determine your style. When I started […]
Starters are writing prompts. A starter can be a set of rules, a pool of words, a scenario, a quotation, a picture, or any combination of these. When placed in your fiction world, starters can help you explore characters, setting, and craft. Character. Starters help you learn about your view-point character by placing him/her in […]
Sometimes creativity needs a little prompting. It is useful to have several plans of action in place for when inspiration refuses to strike. Maybe it just isn’t angry enough. Brainstorming and experimenting offer a fallback plan. They also offer a way to enhance those inspired ideas. They are ways to be more creative but I […]
Creativity is about more than ideas — it is also about the consequences those ideas have for your story. I chose the word “experiment” in the title of this blog because experiments focus on finding or exploring cause-and-effect relationships. I realize that a consequence is a kind of idea but thinking about an idea’s consequences […]
By studying your real and fantasy worlds, you gained a better grounding in facts, rules, opinions, and possibilities. Some of what you learn will probably trigger spontaneous ideas. But what can you do when the words just won’t come? You scheme — come up with a plan of action. The first step is usually brainstorming. The […]
Readers are a finicky bunch. They pick up your book with certain expectations in mind. They want their expectations to be met, but they also want to be surprised. To keep them turning the page, you need to know how your readers think. Reader expectations are partly drawn from genre and category. Genre expectations can […]
Boost your creativity by studying your fictional world. Become familiar with its academics, cultures, individuals, and themes. Know these areas well so you can ground your reader with facts, keep internal consistency with rules, add diversity and conflict with opinions, and set the stage for story with possibility. It is important to know your world regardless of your […]
