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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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.
Aaand we’re microcasting again! A Q&A episode by any other name would sound as neat. Also neat? Eric James Stone joins us again!
What writing rule do you break the most?
When you review your novel do you print it out and mark it up, or do you edit on the computer?
How long do you wait between finishing a novel and starting the editing process?
What is the number-one issue that you have to overcome each day in order to put words to paper?
How do you feel with the fear of screwing up when you’re writing the other?
When giving a book as a gift, how do you decide on a book to give?
Any advice for people wanting to write a grand, universal story for their fantasy novel?
Is there a place you go to be inspired to write?
Do you ever have trouble writing characters out of the story (you know, by killing them)?
How do you strike the balance between too little description and too much?
A Note Regarding The Audio: Brandon’s microphone died just before we started, and we didn’t catch it, so if he sounds echoey it’s because we had to get his track from the other three microphones in the room.
The word “sesquipedalian” means 18 inches long, and is usually only used to describe words that are too long. Find a way to work it into a scene so that it fits.
Howard starts by relating a time when he did it poorly, and why he feels like it didn’t work. Brandon discusses the academic, clinical aspect of the matter, and how he in particular handles planning (or not planning) for character death. Dan talks about the email he gets about page 267. Mary talks about the differences between deaths in the various genres in which she writes.
There’s lots more. If characters risk death in your writing, this ‘cast will certainly affect their odds for survival.
Find a way to kill a character. Then write it in three ways: sad, heroic, and accidental. As an alternative, take a story you’ve already written, and write a different ending so that someone dies instead of living, or lives instead of dying.
