Daniel Way and I will be featured in next week’s X-Position at CBR. If you have a question for us, send it to george @ comicbookresources.com. Put X-Position in the subject line.
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Eve Silver’s upcoming SINS OF THE HEART is a fantastic book. I read it months ago, and the story and characters are still with me. Eve is beginning to gear up for her August release—she’s a One Woman Street Team—and she’s holding a contest at her blog! Check it out.
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i09 has had some interesting posts on writing. Like this one: Inside the writers room: Top scifi TV writers reveal tricks of the trade.
“One of the things I absolutely believe that no writers room should be without is a stupid stick. A stupid stick is a device that, when held by the person that’s pitching, shields that person from ridicule. I find that it’s actually the most useful tool I’ve ever seen in a writers room. A lot of the time, especially in the early going, people feel very unsafe, just talking about themselves, talking about any number of things. Like they’re gonna be mocked. I generally believe that the writers room has to be safe. A good stupid stick allows people to believe that they’re protected.”
And then, this great post: In praise of seat-of-the-pants storytelling…
“The people live! They breathe! They struggle and cry! The thing about a story outline is, it’s usually all plot, with just a few ideas for how that’ll grow into a story. Unless all of the characters are just unimaginative robots — and there’s nothing wrong with that — then the characters will start adding a lot of complexity to the mix as soon as they’re more than just a set of names and actions in a bare outline. Oftentimes, it seems like the better the characters, the more likely they are to wander off the path a bit.
But also, great characters rise to the challenge when the story takes a seemingly random turn. If outside circumstances, rather than your own creative frustrations, force you to swerve in a whole new direction, then your characters will suddenly show some thrilling new dimensions. Really great characters will make that detour in the story feel not just natural, but more fascinating than whatever you’d originally planned.”
Yes.