An essay from 1950 by detective novelist Raymond Chandler about writing: The Simple Art of Murder. I particularly like his emphasis on getting the details right, and the long section on Dashiell Hammett, who was a real-life detective before becoming a writer, that looks at how Hammett's writing works.

A piece by Laura Miller in Salon: A reader's ( Read more... )

Let's talk about headers for a story ( Read more... )

"I have made this letter rather long because I have not had time to make it shorter."
~~ Blaise Pascal.One of the problems with writing is that words tend to expand to occupy all the space you could ever possibly allot to them. Learning to write short, tightly-focused pieces is a skill that can help you turn out both vivid short pieces and longer ( Read more... )

Sorry, I don't mean to jam up the place with posts but this is another topic I think bears discussion ( Read more... )

One of the things on my mind recently is the "finishing" process. It is my biggest nemesis! Up to this point I have pretty much worked solo and I believe this is a big part of my problem. I feel I really need to get a "crew" in place (no insult intended!) to help me move forward, finish things, and grow as a writer ( Read more... )

How short can a short story be ( Read more... )

When housefic_pens merged with housefic_meta, we promised to continue The Clinic's writing exercises. Spring's a good time to get back into things, so here's one we're calling "Household Archeology."
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We’ve moved the Warren Wing Plot Bunny Corral over from housefic_pens.

Corral your spare plot bunnies in the comments below. These bunnies date back to Season Two and Three, but if you see one you’d like to adopt, please take it home!
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It’s been a little while since we had a new exercise, so we’ve rummaged in The Clinic’s storage room and come up with “The Box Exercise.” We've done this one before, when The Clinic was over at housefic_pens, but it really fits this season of the year ( Read more... )

This is perhaps more of a formatting question but I think it fits pretty well with The Clinic so I thought I'd ask since it's been bothering me. At what length should one break a fic into multiple parts? As a companion to that, is there a minimum limit to the length of a chapter? I've seen some people say that a chapter counts as 1,000 words ( Read more... )