C.W.Holeman III

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Books in Progress

A Rainbow All of Orange

Outline


A Term At Briarwood Academy

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A Dakota Entendre

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Drafting


Revisions


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Querying


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Joke of the Week

There are only 10 kinds of people in the world: Those who know binary, and those who don't.

Orson Scott Card Q&A

2024-May-18

Most of this content is approximate quotes. Anything in "" is an explicit and specific quote. Horizontal rules indicate when a new question was asked. Comments in [] are my thoughts.

What do you Need for a Story?

  1. What's the dilemma?
  2. Who's going to resolve it?
  3. How will it be resolved?

The 3-act structure has nothing to do with the lies they teach in classes.

"The only Structure you're ever going to need: Make a promise. Deliver it."

[He's sassy!]

Nobody comes up with new problems, (in their writing issues)

Jokes are present tense. Truth is past tense.

Don't hide the cool story idea! START with it, then explore it.

Your job is to tell us what is happening and why, as clearly and simply as possible.

Teenagers: They have opinions about everything. Especially their family.

Same with children. Only they are also ignorant. I hate it when adults laugh at me as a child for things I don't know.

The things you don't know you don't know. And that's going to bite you in the butt.

When you write, make sure you know what you're talking about.

If you're writing a complete person, why would you skip over the developmental period?

We were people. Ignorant people. But smart, ignorant people.

I wrote black people like they were exactly the same as white people with the same fears, desires, etc. as anyone else. And then took his advice into account that they would always know exactly where the police were at all times.

You imagine. You think it through. You write little practice scenes, and then throw them away, don't try to shoehorn them into the story. You'll have to bend the story too much to make them fit.

It's OK for children to be using warmed over, out of date slang from 10 years ago, just so you can make teenagers make fun of them.

There are no deep characters.

I hate twists. I use them when the story requires it. You have to set them up.

Readers were angry with me. That's OK; we're not in the room with them as they read the book.

If you're aiming for twists, you will deform your story.

All I did was extrapolate from what already existed.

[Hot take, hot take, hot take. Woowzer. Scorches right and LEFT.]

You just never know with technology, when it will begin, and when it will end.

The entire business of writing fiction is moving seamlessly between scenes and summary.

"Show don't tell is crap. Tell almost everything. Tell until it's all set up. Tell...until it matters."

You've a scene that is set up and set up, write it! Don't be a coward. Just write it. It's not that hard. Don't skip the scene.

"The student got a penis-ecktomy, which is always a little rough on a guy."

John Irving, the World According to Ark. The flashback chapter. The only time it was ok, but now it's

Narration is not abstract. It's where you tell what people are doing, and why. Don't forget the why.

Just remember, nothing has just one effect. Nothing.

Riots happen when the government trucks drop off piles of bricks, and they are set up to happen.

Books to read:

"Grade inflation is ridiculous. I just don't pretend that I'm not doing it."

Wow. It sounds like you've taken a screenwriting class. All those words were nonsense. I'm so sorry you had that forced upon you.

"If your writing has anything to do with science fiction or fantasy, most English departments want nothing to do with you."

Narnia doesn't need study. It's self-explanatory.

"Their literature, not writing, literature, professors dropped on them. They know nothing about writing."

"Let the PhD students study your book, and tell you what your three-act structure is and all that other bull*****."

Dropping sick burns, and dirt (Margaret Atwood? "horrible person, and appallingly rude. 'we all hate her' said the others to him.")

Remains of the Day book that says, No, it's the servants who have an interesting life, not the masters.

Heinlein: "The door dilated, and he stepped through." Just said it, and moved on without explanation. Not better than being a door at "doorness" But it told us we were in the future.

"IRobot, the movie, which is better than the book... because the book has no characters."

That's what Heinlein's exposition was all about. Bleeding in the new information bit by bit, and only explaining what the character needs to know, not the reader.

"Heinlein...he would have been cancelled into the grave because he would never have shut his mouth because First He was right, and second, he was stupid."

What to read if you want to start writing science fiction:

"All science fiction is current science fiction."

On prologues, "I skip them now."

"I have committed the crime of prologue."

"Hart's Hope". My very best writing. But the prologue drags it down.

"Prologues are the enemy of caring."

"I don't know why you would avoid clichés." Do you think you're going to write a brand new plot that no one has written before?

"Don't try to be original."

How to stick the landing: Promise early, then land it.

"You said the evil word, 'theme.' Your theme is, this happened, and then this happened, and this happened. That's it. That's your theme."

"I have no theme, I never had a theme, If I ever catch myself having a theme, I mock it in the book, then get rid of it."

The Lord of the Rings "The movie ends when the Ring goes into the Cracks of Doom, if you're an idiot named Peter Jackson." ... The Scouring of the Shire is the heart and soul of the story. [Here here!] If you end without it you don't know why Merry & Pippin were there. Sam's box of soil & the seed of the Mallorn Tree back in the Shire "made me weep."

"Great movie"

Promise the ending. Then when you get to it, it has to mean something before you get there. The ending ends everything.

Favorite example of an epilogue: Pride & Prejudice.

"As soon as you start thinking you're a better writer than Shakespeare, then you're a real writer."

I wrote my YA novel exactly the same as my non-YA books. With no difference. It had young characters, so they decided that it was YA.

YA, you try to avoid things that will generally offend parents.

Protagonist should be 2 years older than your intended readers.

You are always writing an audiobook, because it goes through the auditory center of the brain.

"Said is a comma," people treat it like invisible character.

"If you want to write politically correct, if you expect this fad to last, go ahead, but I think this pronoun fad is inevitably going to go away."

Action by the character should be in the same paragraph as the spoken words.

If you have won WotF, and you send a query letter, you will get asked for the full novel you have written if you mention winning in your query letter. "I have never known an exception to this."

2024-05-18 At the 1st ever Midnight Quills Writing Retreat.