mbarker: (Me typing?)
Writing Excuses Season Four Episode Six: James Dashner's Lessons on Pacing

From http://www.writingexcuses.com/2010/02/14/writing-excuses-4-6-pacing-with-james-dashner/

Key points: Use genuinely intriguing mysteries and real information to make readers keep reading, not false reveals. Show readers interesting things, don't conceal boring stuff, and they'll keep reading. Mysteries, revelations, disasters, action scenes -- these keep the reader going, so spread them out and mix them up. Consider chapter length, sentence length, even dialogue tags as your pacing tools, and think about how to use them to make it interesting for the reader from beginning to end.
Inside a wet cardboard box, seeping slowly in the rain... )
[Brandon] We want to end with a writing prompt. I think we'll go ahead and use James Dashner's wet box writing prompt. Someone opens a door and finds a wet cardboard box on their doorstep. They reach down and pick it up. It's seeping something...
[James] Disgusting.
[Brandon] Disgusting, of course.
[Dan] It could be seeping something happy.
[Brandon] This has been Writing Excuses. You're out of excuses, now go write.
mbarker: (Me typing?)
Writing Excuses Season Three Episode 26: Nanowrimo

From http://www.writingexcuses.com/2009/11/22/writing-excuses-season-3-episode-26-nanowrimo/

Key points: Nanowrimo, National Novel Writing Month, is an opportunity to write 50,000 words in November along with 160,000 other people worldwide. See http://www.nanowrimo.org/ Nanowrimo forces you to write quickly, turn off your internal editor, shut up and write.

What do you do when characters act dumb? If it's in character, fine. If it's not, what information are they missing, what emotions cloud their judgment? Forging ahead is one of the best ways to find an alternate solution. What do you do when main characters digress? Keep writing, and expect to throw away words. Save the good stuff for another book, because there will be other Novembers. What do you do when the pacing changes? If you're comfortable, keep going. You discover aspects of your style by writing. It's possible to have character development in action -- fight scenes can reveal and develop characters. Getting ideas on paper lets you see them and develop them, plus it gives you good practice. Nanowrimo -- keep writing.
cut and paste? )
[Howard] Katherine, give us a writing prompt that involves a traveling shovel.
[Katherine] On the nano forums, I don't know if any of you all have been there but there's this sort of motif about the traveling shovel of death. One of your characters gets killed with a shovel somehow. You just have to work it into your story.
[Dan] Awesome.
[Howard] There's your writing prompt. Kill somebody with a shovel. No, wait a minute. Write about killing somebody with a shovel. You're out of excuses, now...
[Dan] Kill somebody with a shovel.
[Howard] Go write.

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