Setting In Fiction – A Real Life Lesson | Marylee MacDonald
Setting in fiction is inextricably bound up with character. On a cold winter day I learned this important lesson about the “relatedness” of character and setting from a young Navaho. Creighton Begay lived with his uncle in the most inaccessible part of Canyon de Chelly. Each fall he and his uncle brought in supplies by […]
Tension Skyrockets When You Tweak the Setting
Use setting to heighten tension in a story. Put a character in a place she or he doesn’t feel physically or psychologically comfortable, and you immediately inject tension into the scenes. Will she or won’t she figure out how to cope? In my story “Oregano,” Janice Dawkins comes in at the end of a long […]
Notebooks: The One Item Every Writer Needs
Writing notebooks from other creative people can inspire us to keep track of our own creative thoughts. On the tab called Writing Notebooks, I lay out the general idea of keeping a writing notebook, but I want to go into a little more detail here. That’s because it’s so important for writers at any stage […]
Are You Ready for Your First Book Festival?
Follow my blog with Bloglovin Your book is out. Now, you have a chance to sell directly to readers. One of the best places to do that is a book festival. The Payson Book Festival in Payson, AZ provided an opportunity for me to see how other writers sold their books. Next time I try […]
Writing Notebooks: Are You Keeping One?
Writing notebooks are an integral part of a writer’s daily practice. If you keep a writing notebook, you’ll have an infinite source of fresh material to generate stories or to help you recall details of a place you visited. Here’s a visual example of how I use my notebooks. I had scheduled a writing getaway […]
Historical Fiction’s Biggest Pitfalls
If you’re writing historical fiction, don’t fall into the info-dumping trap. You love all those bits and pieces of info you’ve discovered, but your reader will have a hard time keeping an eye on the story if you can’t restrain yourself. Limit yourself to one or two protagonists–one, preferably. Let that person experience life as […]
Characters and Making Them Real
Photo Source All fiction revolves around characters, such as Mr. Peggotty in Charles Dickens’ David Copperfield. Characters must engage us emotionally, or they become like wallpaper, flattened figures we don’t really care about. Alternately, they can appear cartoonish, as in the illustration above. Have you heard the phrase “well drawn” used about certain characters? That’s […]
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