I wrote about Amanda Lee Koe's phenomenal SISTER SNAKE, (and couldn't stop myself from a light musing on fairy tales because you know me).
https://loft.org/writers-block-blog/sister-snake-amanda-lee-koe-and-time-magic
These gargoyles aren’t worried about explaining themselves to a human reader; they’re just trying to survive.
I wrote about Tara Campbell's fantastic CITY OF DANCING GARGOYLES and an opening that unsettles.
https://loft.org/writers-block-blog/city-dancing-gargoyles-and-decentering-humanity
This class is about making things happen. It's about writing dynamic scenes that move the plot & reveal character. Many writers swear by conflict, but positive moments of interpersonal connection or intimacy can do the same work. We'll practice both ways.
8 weeks, Wednesdays, 1/22/25 - 3/12/25, 10am-12pm CST, Online (live meetings)
#WritingCommunity #WritingClass #AmWriting #WritingConversations #DynamicScenes #Intimacy&Conflict #WritingCraft
I'm offering one-on-one support for fiction writers (at all levels, yes even absolute hobbyists) through a whole new range of coaching services! Please pass along to cool people who might be into it :) https://www.eliotwesteditorial.com/coaching.html
I got to interview Anna Farro Henderson (author of Core Samples: A Climate Scientist’s Experiments in Politics and Motherhood) about her very wonderful book and some of the tools she used to make climate science feel relatable, human, and urgent.
(And of course—this being me—I asked about the writing tool of including weird and personal bodily functions.)
Looking for a new book on the craft of writing? I helped "play test" this workbook about revisions. It's good stuff, and it's on sale this month. https://shop.rachelthompson.co/product/revision-love-workbook/ #WritingCommunity #Bookstodon #WritingCraft #workbook #revision #editing
And here is the recording of the info session. It's long, but you'll be rewarded with a discount code and you can always speed up our voices (just remember it's not how I really talk).
We're doing a free, live, online info session about Lit!Commons, this wondrous and exciting virtual writing community I'm part of. It's got asynchronous classes, live drop-in zoom sessions, and a space to get to know _each other_ to make lasting connections.
I can tell you more if you attend the free session June 11, 5-6 central.
(Or just ask me questions here!)
#WritingCommunity #WritingConversations #WritingWorkshop #WritingCraft #LitCommons
https://www.eventbrite.com/e/molecular-description-tickets-863982704527?utm_experiment=test_share_listing&aff=ebdsshios free workshop this Saturday 14:00-16:00 EDT.
“Description is a writer’s keystone skill. Far trickier than faxing pictures from your brain onto a page, description is often where otherwise strong ideas falter. Synthesizing five years of reading for Augur and decades of writing, Molecular Description starts with the idea that "describe" is a writer’s fundamental verb. From there, you’ll go spelunking through what can be accomplished when you centre description as the basic conceptual unit of your work. Whether you want to write about neutronium krakens or wilted flowers in a kitchen vase, you’ll leave equipped with reliable tools for vivid, powerful, and creative descriptions.”
Lit!Commons--the new thing I'm doing--is live!
It's a virtual space for writers, featuring short, asynchronous classes about craft, creative process, & publishing. It's also a place for connection & community & conversations. And every week, there will be 10 live zoom sessions that you can drop into to talk about writing. (Like we do here--but with voices too.)
#WritingCommunity #WritingConversations #Writing #AmWriting #WritersOfMastodon #WritingCraft
There's this amazing thing about reading & writing--when you come across a passage that you love or hate or find strange--you can dig right down into the words to figure out how that effect was achieved.
Here's me doing a close read of a few lovely sentences because I wanted to study how they created such a dreamlike tone:
How do YOU mine what you read for writing techniques?
Romance writers (& editors), are you interested in gender as a craft tool & inclusion issue? I've just reposted my article 
Doing Gender on Purpose: Diversity, Depth, and Character in Romance so that it's freely available. I hope you'll check it out, share it, give it a think :) https://www.eliotwesteditorial.com/gender-on-purpose.html
@romancelandia @edibuddies #Romancelandia #RomanceWriters #WritingCraft #AmWritingRomance #AmWriting #AmEditing #Romance
And yet!
Another thing I like to talk about is how you can use a body inside a story to inspire physical sensation in the reader. Which might break the scene a bit as the read shudders themself write back into their living room (sometimes, not always), but it also puts the story itself into the real world. Where it can work some other kinds of magic.
The panel was more about content than craft, tbh. But another reason I'm so into bodies on the page is they create dimension in a scene. There's this dynamic three-dimensional _someone_ moving through a space. And that aspect invites the reader to feel a scene as a space too. (Instead of just that string of one-word-at-at-a-time).
I was on this panel about bodies & writing about them (I absolutely write about weird bodies!) and so we were talking about how a scene can often twist the chronic into the acute so it can be better comprehended. That's the same maybe with a body's function in a scene. This is a rambling thought.
But maybe, maybe, maybe, folks are interested in talking about how they use bodies (weird or less so) in their fiction?
This craft column is about Susie Yang's WHITE IVY and a whole lot of tools to make physical description alive and vibrant and even important to the story.
What are your favorite techniques for physical description of characters? And what makes you like a physical description when you read?
#WritingConversations #WritingCommunity #Bookstodon #PhysicalDescription #ReadingLikeAWriter #WhiteIvy #WritingCraft
#MondayMotivation for #writers:
Prolific #author #RayBradbury suggested that writers not begin their writing careers by #writing a novel, but focus on writing one #ShortStory a week for 52 weeks. His logic was that you can't write 52 BAD stories in a row, so there has to be some good ones in there, somewhere.
He also said that writing #ShortStories helps a #writer hone their craft and skills. At the end of a week while writing a book, you won't know if anything you wrote is good or not; but when writing a short story, you know much sooner.
He also recommended READING one short story, one non-fiction essay (on any topic), and one classic (not modern) poem, every night for 1,000 nights, as a way to study the craft of writing.
"Quantity produces quality. If you only write a few things, you're doomed." - Ray Bradbury
A client has me thinking about chapters.
Chapters can feel essayistic (coving a topic) or episodic (covering an event). Some writers care most about their length.
I consider their shape & how they make patterns & how the breaks influence a reader's experience.
They're kind of arbitrary like paragraphs--which is fun.
How do you think about chapters?
3/ The scene in #StarWars #TheMandalorian immediately following the one I mentioned (about half-way in) has another good example, this one of #CharacterDevelopment.
[Spoiler free] Aside from the large group, Character A, who is trying to lead a mission & doubts they can do what needs to be done, ponders their task at hand. Character B gives them encouragement, by revealing why he has aligned with Char B.
In the process, we see not only Char A as more three-dimensional, but also learn about Char B's motivations for going on this mission in the first place, and for their recent previous unexpected actions in regard to Char A.
Give #characters time to ponder-- moments of self-doubt, introspection, reflection on past events, and strategizing for impending events.
You can use these "breather moments" between action scenes to focus on character building, #motivation, etc.
2/ The trick with this approach is to make sure the #dialogue sounds natural and not like exposition. There is an excellent example of this being done VERY well in the most recent episode (seven) of #TheMandalorian.
Two groups of characters who haven't spoken in years are sitting down for a meal. Their dialogue artfully brings everyone up to speed on the story so far-- including the folks like me, who haven't seen every episode of every #StarWars series ever.
Having "outsider" / "new guy" #characters also helps: They need things explained to them, and can act as a proxy for the reader/viewer.
