Season Towers

In the current environment awash with paperback novels, publishing wisdom says you get between 3 paragraphs and 3 pages (more often the former than the latter) to interest a reader. This applies to fanfic no less than to published fiction. If you can't grab a reader by that point, the reader puts the book down and tries something else (unless really desperate). That's the hard, cold, brutal truth.

There are a number of these things: overused words and phrases that are basically empty, and that provide an escape route from the more evocative phrase you could have used instead. Frankly, I want a list of these. I know of a few that plague my own writing, but I'm sure there are loads more that I don't even think about.

Of course, all this talk of honesty doesn't mean the narrator might not be fooling himself. The unreliable narrator is one of the charms and risks of first-person. (I am firmly convinced that House, for example, if he were writing his own story, would be one of the most unreliable narrators in the history of the planet. Which is ironic from someone who values realism as much as he does.) The risk to the author is that some readers may not pick up that the protagonist's view of his reality is inaccurate, or to what degree he's fooling himself -- and whether, on some level, he knows it and is avoiding opening that closet door.

What were some of the Firefly stories you never got to tell?
He hemmed and hawed, “Should I tell you this?… Oh well, what’s he going to do, fire me?” The original show was darker and this story was more in keeping with that tone.
It opens with Mal and Inara fighting (as they do). Mal tells her she pretends to be a lady and wants everyone to bow before her and kiss her hand but she’s just a whore. Then the Reavers attack and take Inara. While trying to get her back they learn that she had something that would make anyone who had sex with her die. When they finally track down and board the ship they find all of the Reavers dead and Inara shaking and traumatized.

If you're having a hard time coming up with a character, period, look at your story and find all the tangential people who could become involved. For example, if you're writing a fic in which Spike is playing poker, think of the types of people (or demons) he'd be playing with. Choose one to write about. On a similar note, what about the waitress bringing them their drinks? How does she react to the situation? You might never use this character in your story, but it's a great way to imagine how original characters could become involved.

Keep in mind also what it is they have as common ground. They've both got an extremely practical streak, and both tend to pull away from their friends when they could most use them. They both internalize a lot of things, have unresolved parent issues—not to mention the unresolved Angel issues.

many fans do not seem to differentiate between types of souls (i.e. human, vampire, vengeance demon, Mmm Fashnik, etc.).

As long as all of the 'verse demons were evil, the term soul and the definition like-a-conscience, was sufficient. Whistler, Doyle, Lorne and their ilk have muddied the waters, and this is an attempt to filter them. Although some of these terms, definitions and explanations are non-canonical, they draw on canon, don't contradict it, and attempt to fill it in, and wank it a little so that it works.

Make a list of what the reactions of his friends/family/random group of strangers are going to be. Look at it. Can your list be neatly divided into a "omg squeee thats so kawaiiiii!!!!1" category and a "wtf thats wrong get out of my house and go angst, u sicko!!!!!!11!"? If so, you are guilty of stereotyping your characters and oversimplifying human emotions, and you are hereby sentenced to reading the rest of this rant.

In plotting an action-adventure type film, how your hero fails is at least as important as how he succeeds. If the plot requires the hero to fail, try to figure out a way for him to fail as impressively as possible.

Consider RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK. Indiana Jones is perhaps the greatest action hero in the history of the movies. And in his debut film, he flat-out fails from beginning to end.

A neat trick to quickly devising an interesting character is to think about the contradictions in their nature. You probably do this already when you’re trying to describe an interesting actual person whom you know. You say things like “He’s this big bruiser of a guy, who writes the most amazing poetry.” Or “She’s so quiet and shy, except when she’s arguing a case in court.”

Once you have established the purpose of your fight scene, you probably already know how it is going to end. Now you have to figure out how to get to the end. In a way, this makes your job harder than that of the BTVS and ANGEL screenwriters. They can just outline the basics of a fight scene and leave the minute details to the fight choreographer. You, on the other hand, are the fight choreographer as far as your story is concerned, so you have to visualize the action in as much detail as you would see on the screen

Okay. That's a whole scene, though there isn't much to it. It comprises the essential elements of scene -- a place, a time frame, and a change that moves the story forward. We know that something vitally important has happened, because we're reading about it. (If it weren't important, why write it?) We have some feel for the story -- lives no doubt will depend upon the smooth functioning of the control panel and the command center, and we already know that there's a glitch that no one else knows about. When we started into the scene, the command center was working smoothly. When we left it, there was a problem, and a problem heightened by the fact that the people who needed to know about it didn't.

If I can say anything important to writers who are still learning the craft of fiction, it's this: imagery does not occur on the writer's page; it occurs in the reader's mind. To describe everything is to supply a photograph in words; to indicate the points which seem the most vivid and important to you, the writer, is to allow the reader to flesh out your sketch into a portrait. Since "Salem's Lot" was originally published several years ago, I've seen maybe three dozen different pictures of the Marsten House, all based on the description I have in that short paragraph quoted above; no two are the same, and none of them is quite the picture I had in my own mind -- and I wouldn't have it any other way.

What do your characters look like? Coming into a scene/story (excluding some original erotica), readers will generally have some idea of the characters' appearances, at least when they're fully clothed. Now if the writer is going to get these people naked for the first time, it's worth bearing a few things in mind. Clothes can only conceal or enhance so much. This may be mainly a fanfic problem these days -- has the whole 'why, Miss Jones, you really are beautiful' thing completely died out in original fiction these days? -- where writers want their idea of the perfect body to be lurking under whatever we usually see the characters wearing. But it can be enough to throw the reader out of a story.

I'm also guessing that there are other writers who want a certain erotic effect and don't know how to get it without going out of character.

Here's how to start: Don't think about what happens in the scene. Think about what payoff you want from it.

Now, there are two ways to do this. You can think about what one character feels, or you can think about what the other character does. For instance, maybe you say, "X goes all crazy and animalistic," or maybe you say, "Y feels like he's been pushed way beyond self-consciousness and can just let go." Or maybe you say, "X uses his mad sex skillz," or maybe you say, "Y feels utterly coddled and pampered and treated like a king."

The trick I prefer to use, is threading the Description into the character's Actions. Using their Actions brings other parts of the character into focus, rather than describe the character in one lump paragraph.

EXAMPLE:
From: Night Train -
Good god in heaven, this guy wants sex? With her? Was he out of his mind? She wasn’t unattractive; she’d never had a problem getting dates. Her generous bust-line, more than generous butt, and small waist drew the guys out of the woodwork. But this guy was just too pretty to even consider someone that didn’t come straight from Hollywood.

Alcohol is the ultimate lube. (Not like that. I imagine most alcohol is rubbish lube like that - all sticky.) Got your two characters, need them to boink? Enough UST between them to sink Manhattan but they just won't resolve it? Too prideful? Too shy? Too damn awkward? Get them drunk. They'll wake up in each other's arms the next morning.

Alcohol is the catalyst that gets a lot of fics going. Or existing. Whatever.

"Now that you have defined magic in itself, take the time to define its place in your world. A crucial question is, Who can use magic? Is it a skill, like drawing, that can be learned by those with a talent? Is magic innate? If so, is it hereditary or arbitrary? Is it common or rare..."

"This doesn't mean that a character cannot recognize that some emotional reactions/relationships were less deep than they'd presumed at the time. Xander, for example, can go right ahead and reflect on the sweetness of his Cordy relationship while thinking how different that was from what he feels for Anya, or Spike, or Clem, or whoever he's fallen in love with, not that I think he'd do the reflecting. What it means is that if the previous relationship was presented as deep and meaningful to the character even long after it ended, you don't go and make it not meaningful in your story..."