Writing Excuses 9.49: Hiding the Open Grave
So, you’re planning to kill somebody, but you don’t want anyone to see it coming. How do you make that happen?
We begin by talking about the hints that writers inadvertently drop, and why they drop those hints. Then we look at how to write without sending those cues, and how to get away with that while still fulfilling promises made to the reader.
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Homework: Take a story you’ve been planning. Kill the protagonist in the first scene, then have a secondary character step in and pick up the plot. You don’t need to finish the whole story this way–just get far enough into this exercise that you can see what a surprising death looks like from your side of the keyboard.
Thing of the week: Ruins, by Dan Wells, narrated by Julia Whelan.
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