Suspension of Disbelief

From my experience, as an avid fantasy reader and sometimes writer, the fastest way to pull a reader out of a story is with inconsistency. Word choice and pacing play a big role in keeping things moving along smoothly, but nothing jars the eyes quite like a bafflingly uncharacteristic action / response, contradicting established premises or flat ou...

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Managing Plots

I haven’t spoken with other authors about their method for tracking and maintaining plotlines, so I have no idea if what I do is similar. Before I start working on an outline, I begin with an idea, which first sees the light of day in a text file oddly enough called Ideas. I tend to have a dozen or so...

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Changing Plot Midstream

I hope this never happens to me, though I can see how it might. I go to great lengths to have my plot and subplots thought out and planned long before I start chapter one. Having to change the main plot halfway through a manuscript means I either didn’t plan as well as I thought I did, or an idea...

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