Storytellersunplugged

Photo by Hryckowian I’m in the midst of teaching an online workshop called Jump Start Your Novel, which focuses on the methods I use to organize a project so that I can write the most powerful novel possible in a reasonable time frame. In the workshop we’ve been talking a bit about characters, so I thought I’d share some thoughts on that subject today. Characters are the heart of any story. A reader wants to be transported out of their daily existence to another ... Read More

THE KEY LIME PIE-EFFECT by Matteo Curtoni “I haven't had a key lime pie in ten years.” “When ya had it, did ya like it?” “I was a completely different person ten years ago. Let's give key lime a day in court. And a large glass of milk.” – from Natural Born Killers I know – being worried about readers’ reception is essentially silly. And I feel it’s even sillier when you’re not exactly worried and you’re still hard at work on a novel that’s coming out in ... Read More

by Matteo Curtoni I don't know if it's the same for some (or all) of you, but my stories are hungry. They're always hungry and some of them are more than hungry - they're ravenous. Of course they're hungry for  love and attention, for the hours I spend working on them. But the hunger I'm talking about now is something different. It's the hunger for the things that stories want to find inside my head when I'm writing, I guess. They sink their ... Read More

(Pinch hitting today, so my apologies for the lateness of this post. - J) A scene is the most basic building block of a novel.  String enough of them together in the correct way and you’ve got a page turner.  Do it incorrectly and you’re almost guaranteed to have a flop.  Of all the lessons I've learned in my time as a writer, this is the most fundamentally important in my view.  The average novel contains anywhere from twenty to sixty scenes.  Go ... Read More

by David Niall Wilson  I find myself in an odd position, at least odd for me. I almost always approach the plotting and creation of a new novel by starting with one element and branching out. For instance, when I wrote "The Mote in Andrea's Eye," it was because Trish asked me "Why have no hurricanes disappeared into The Bermuda Triangle?" When I wrote "Ancient Eyes," I started with the desire to expand on the hill folk that were depicted in the movie ... Read More

Get the podcast - or Subscrbe in iTunes When I started writing in 1999 after a long hiatus, I didn’t plunge straight into a novel. That probably sounds logical, but some writers skip the short story and cut their teeth on books. John Grisham hasn’t written many short stories, for example. Some successful novelists claim they have trouble with the short form. For me, it was a no-brainer. I had written short stories in college, and I felt the need to exercise my ... Read More

When it rains, it pours. We've all heard that a million times, and though it's a generalization with no real basis in fact – it's also true that when things get overwhelming, they only seem to get crazier. This year has been that way for me, so I figured I'd take a day here, write a post and see if I could put it in perspective. For several years I had very little published…those were recent years. It happened ... Read More

The View from the XX Set by Justine Musk 1 Writing is seduction, when you think about it. Seduction is to get inside someone else’s view of things and reshape it to your own, to lead them in your chosen direction, to compel them until they are exactly where you want them, whether it’s in your story or in your bed. What writers and seducers have in common is a mindset that is empathetic enough to get into the skin, the head, of another ... Read More

Last month I began a short series on Beginnings. We identified the six key things a good novel beginning should accomplish and covered the first, hooking the reader, in a bit more depth. This month I want to tackle two more of the six - establishing a bond between the lead and the reader and presenting the story world. Establishing a bond between the Lead and the Reader The second thing a beginning should do is establish a bond between the Lead ... Read More

(Admin note:  Matteo will be here with a longer piece next month, same time.  This time I caught him by surprise, and he didn't have as much time as he wanted.  I asked him just for a short introductory piece...and here you have it.  He's an Italian author who writes in English as well as his native tongue, a translator, and a great guy.  Enjoy! - DNW)   by Matteo Curtoni I’m not sure I know who the Good and the Bad really are, but ... Read More