interview with Iain M Banks on writing / plots / characters etc
As November inches closer I find I'm running short on time for plotting my nanowrimo effort (let alone study, which is *really* what I should be doing right now), but here is a pdf (largish) of an interview with Iain M Banks , who talks about plots, the writing process, characters etc.
http://www.judithspelman.co.uk/documents/WrMag_Nov_08.pdf
I thought it was good reading. He had a couple of ideas for the writing process that I'm going to try - one of them is to colour code the text relating to each character so that you can see if you've been neglecting one (I think I saw talea use that during nano last year, but for subplots rather than characters - is that right?).