My straight man is more or less a non-entity right now. In this world I'm creating with weird, self-obsessed characters, he's supposed to be the one you identify with. Unfortunately he's so much of a surrogate-type character that he's really just kind of there. That's no good. My favorite straight men characters are just as well-developed and ( Read more... )

It sucks in real life, but my goodness it's appealing in literature.

Right now I'm trying to think of a good reason why my teenaged characters can absolutely, point-blank, not end up together, or even get together at all, despite however much I would want to write it otherwise.  I'm talking way beyond something along the lines of "one of them ( Read more... )

The way this exercise works, said my sixth grade teacher Kirsten, you put your pen to the paper and write “I want to write about” and then you keep writing until the whole page is filled with things you want to write about. It didn’t really work for me - I find most writing exercises to be boring huge swill-generators - but since I apparently am ( Read more... )