Archive for March, 2012
Flip the Story
Yesterday at SpecTechnique we looked at cases when a cliche is deformed or expanded. When you’re going into a deformed cliche, you think you’ve seen this line before. Then when the cliche flips around on you, you’re taken by surprise. This is a technique writers can use to breach their readers’ defenses. Today we’re leaving […]
Filed under: ACTION, CHARACTERIZATION, EXPOSITION, MICRO-MANAGEMENT, STRUCTURE, Uncategorized, VIEWPOINT, WORLDBUILDING, WRITING STYLE | 1 Comment
Tags: China Mieville, John Scalzi, Mary Gentle, Osamu Tezuka, Star Wars
A Few Words on Editing
A few editing hints from The Last Blade 2…
Filed under: Uncategorized | 1 Comment
Tags: Editing, The Last Blade
Deformed Cliches
A quick entry today…. And from the Stygian abyss of the past, dear reader, I bring an evangelical gospel of good news, nothing less than a divine commandment…. Receive this blog post as an omen!!! Because today at SpecTechnique we’re looking at deforming cliches, and how to bend ‘em back into shapes that are fresh […]
Filed under: WRITING STYLE | Closed
Tags: Balzac, Cliches, John Kennedy Toole, M John Harrison, Robert Silverberg, Thomas Mann
Linky Linky
Today in lieu of an update here I’m doing a guest post at Grasping For The Wind about “Misdirection in Worldbuilding.” Big up to John Ottinger for featuring me. Also, “Cold Embrace,” the vampires-in-space story I wrote for the 4th week of Clarion West, is now up at Ray Gun Revival. Tomorrow, check back here […]
Filed under: LINKAGE | Closed
Tags: Clarion West, grasping for the wind, ray gun revival, vampires
Evacuated Descriptions
Hello SpecTechnique readers. Today I’ve got a short but hopefully interesting entry about what I like to call evacuated descriptions. One of the most frequent notes I got when I started out writing was that my verbs were weak & wimpy. I preferred “was running” to “ran”; “was defeated” to “lost.” My verbs weren’t sufficiently active […]
Filed under: WRITING STYLE | Closed
Tags: Cormac McCarthy, Georges Simenon, Michael Moorcock
SpecTechnique 