Almost nobody would publish my funny little ditty, Never Kill A Dog Or Cat In Your Novel, because they found it a tad too disturbing. Cue Slackjaw, a humor journal that specializes in over-the-top weirdness. Thank you, Slackjaw, because without you I’d be forced to conform, and I just don’t know how. You can check out this devilish little 4-minute read…here.
How do fiction authors create believable bad guys? I find I must explore the existence of my own inner villain. Today at The Blood-Red Pencil, I explore this confronting approach to writing antagonists, with a post called I’m The Bad Guy?
It happens to writers sometimes, but I never thought it would happen to me. No matter how much we love them, no matter how hard they work for us, no matter how sure we are that they cannot be replaced: sometimes we have to fire our protagonists. Today at The Blood-Red Pencil I consider why I had to fire my historical novel’s first protagonist, and how I discovered whether my new protagonist was up to the job.
Today at The Blood-Red Pencil, I look at storytelling as the opening of a fan. Check out The Writer and the Secret Fan, here.
I recently had a chance to hear world-class novelist Kazuo Ishiguro speak on the craft of writing at a Lighthouse Writers Workshop event. If you would like to be inspired, check out what I took away from his words in my post today at The Blood-Red Pencil.
