Writer Unboxed

Right this minute, a battle over who owns the intellectual property rights of fiction writers is taking place in a London court. Dan Brown, author of mega-seller The Da Vinci Code, is being sued by Michael Baigent and Richard Leigh, the co-authors of the non-fiction book Holy Blood, Holy Grail. Baigent, Leigh, along with co-author [...]

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il·lu·sion·ism ( -l zh -n z m) n. Philosophy. The doctrine that the material world is an immaterial product of the senses. Julian Beever, whose amazing spidey sidewalk pic is at left, continually wows people with his artistry and imagination, tricking them into believing they’re seeing three dimensions instead of two. I think artists can [...]

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In the writer’s blogosphere, Ray Rhamey has carved out a unique place. His blog, Flogging the Quill, is one of the most-linked-to writer’s blogs and tops every blogroll. His observations regarding the craft of writing fiction are spot-on and mostly inarguable. When Ray edits a writer’s sample and modestly types “FWIW” at the end, the [...]

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Since he was kind enough to mention our blog on his, we checked out Quantum and found Eric von Rothkirch’s SF/F blog to be a gem. We’ll be keeping an eye on this blog….Melly discusses the latest on Google Book Search and its implication for writers. Something’s happening in the collision between the Web and [...]

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I posted on the importance of authenticity in storytelling a few days ago and promised a glimpse at one of the big screen’s biggest authentic successes: When Harry Met Sally. If you ever have the opportunity to listen to the movie notes with director/producer Rob Reiner, take it. (In fact, I highly recommend viewing director [...]

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In my previous post, I discussed how the overuse of –ing and as dependent clauses can rob your writing of power, in much the same way that the overuse of adjective or adverbs can. In their invaluable book “Self-Editing for Fiction Writers” Renni Browne and Dave King offer an example of how even the pros [...]

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Truth: No one’s going to care about a story unless a goodly amount of their brain is sparkin’ along with you – invested, your willing captive for a few days or a few hours. Engaging a reader, or a viewer, requires authenticity on many levels, especially when it comes to characterization. I recently broke down [...]

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The dreaded –ing or as phrase. I love them. It’s an easy way to achieve sentence variation and show simultaneous action. “Grabbing the ice pick, she plunged it into the vampire.” “As she plunged the ice pick into the vampire, he squealed in agony.” What’s wrong with these two sentences? the beginning writer asks. Nothing, [...]

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Got Casual Fridays? If you work from home, every day can be Casual (Fri)day, but if you work in a corporate setting M-F, then you might especially love dress-down workdays. Lucky you, I’m on deadline, which means I’m steeped in health information, which means I sometimes stumble across tippy nibbles that writers might be able [...]

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Miss Snark reminds writers yet again that flipping the bird to your agent is not a good business practice…Victoria Strauss busts a few myths about new writers…Nienke posts a nice interview with author Michelle Rowan…Ray gets down with show not tell, and as usual I want to rush back to my wip and fix a [...]

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Last week, I highlighted the novelist’s golden rule: show but don’t tell. Well, guess what? Screenwriters break this rule all the time themselves. They can get away with writing, for example, “character is suddenly passionate” and “he’s really mad.” What the heck? Doesn’t this fly in the face of what I said about screenwriters showing [...]

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“Whatcha waiting, whatcha waiting, whatcha waiting for?” Gwen Stefani In my previous post, Habits, I mused about the necessity of getting into a habit of writing if one wanted to get anything accomplished. In that post, I wrote about ruthlessly claiming the best (writing) time of day as your own. There is another reason a [...]

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