Too Personal

I read an open letter to a celebrity on the Internet. It must have been written well. Because it motivated me to post a response. However you needed to be a member of the site to post a comment. I tried to sign up. But I was taken aback by the questions on the form to create an account.

Here are some way too personal questions they ask: What is your household income? Do you have kids? Have you voted in the most recent election? What is your political party affiliation?

LOL. What kind of interrogation game are these schmucks running? I am not providing that type of information to these jokers. Note to people running blogs: Make it easy for me to post responses. Otherwise I am not coming back to your blog. Rant off.

Label Frustration

I like to add labels to my Blogger posts. It helps categorize things. This is a plus for my readers as well. There is just one problem with this. Blogger wants to auto-complete the words I type as labels. I guess they use the past labels I have entered to guess. But this is getting in the way of my typing the correct labels I want now.

How the heck do you turn this off? Even Microsoft Word has the ability to cut out this nonsense. Come on Blogger. This is just good user interface design. Don't get in the way of the user who knows what they are doing. Stop frustrating me. Please. I beg you. Don't make me run to another blogging system. We've been together too long.

Googles Sites

It is time to return to Google. Today I am not going to discuss blogger. But I am going to talk about my first experiences with Google Sites. This is a free feature from Google that allows you to design and deploy web sites. I think this was previously known as Google Page Creator, which is currently being phased out and is no longer available to new users.

I found Google Sites pretty intuitive to use. I don't think I ever consulted the online help. But I did manage to bang out a nice looking web site with over 25 pages. It only took one evening. The hardest part of the experience was waiting for the tool to work with very large web pages. Google wants me to upgrade my browser to Google Chrome. Perhaps that will help. But for now I want to stick with my Internet Explorer 6.0. For now I plan to try building some new web sites with Google Sites and see how far it takes me. If it turns out to be anything like Blogger, I will most likely be using it for years to come.

The Time Line

Let's wrap up the things I learned about writing good fiction (and hopefully good blogs). You should start by plotting the time line of the story. This does not mean you tell the story in this order. It just gives you the big picture.

Then you write your first draft. This is when you hit the plot main points. It if often fun and beneficial to jump to the interesting scenes. This may give you the motivation you need to go the distance.

The main goal for all of your prose is to advance the plot. Get rid of anything that does not accomplish that main purpose. Get a second pair of eyes to do your proofreading. Have your proofreaders give you an outline of your story. See if they get the plot, theme, and main characters from their first read.

Much thanks to Terry Wessner for teaching me some of the finer points of good fiction. See you at the next Anthrcon.

Dialogue Plus Action

Let's continue to learn how to write great fiction. Props to my main man Terry Wessner who instructed me on these techniques one day.

Be careful not to make your characters sound alike. It is tough given you are just one author. You should also avoid using slang. It gets old quick. That will make your piece dated.

Do not worry much about the genre for which you are writing. There are more important details that will determine your success. You should focus on providing dialogue plus action.

The audience can do the hard work for you. The will fill in the details that are not explicitly written in your manuscript. Just provide the reader with the bare minimum amount of information that is necessary.

Next time I will go over the story timeline, and how you can keep it all together. For now I will leave you with this quote - "God is a great supporting actor."

Characters Redux

Ok let's talk some more about the user of characters to produce good fiction. As always thanks to Terry Wessner for teaching me this stuff. Here is the main point. You should only include characters that move the plot forward. The only other characters you should add are those that give required information.

Your story's characters have to support your theme. That does not mean the characters should follow what the story needs them to do. They should always act in the spirit of their own motivations. But include characters that are vital to the storyline. Be also aware that complex characters can have many motivations. Some of those motivations will be competing ones.

When writing about character activities, make sure they do what they want. They should not act as the author wants. That's enough for today. Next time I will go into character voice and other things related to dialog.

Characters and Setting

Let's continue with more lessons I learned from Terry Wessner. This is how you write good fiction. You should engage the senses. In fact, try to stimulate all the reader's senses. You want to put the reader in the story. It must be concrete. Otherwise you get a shallow image and might lose the reader.

The narrator should describe the setting of your imaginary world. Don't let the characters do this with their dialog. That is weak. Often time some little details that the narrator shares can make a huge impact. You may have the narrator describe the setting as the character perceives it.

Here are some final points. The audience has to relate to your writing. It is key. You will also need to do a lot of research before writing. However 90% or more of the research will not actually make it into your verbiage. You still need to go and do the hard work. Good luck for now. More fiction tips to come.