Freeware Outliner for Authors: TextTree 1.3

Merry Christmas, everybody. Several years ago I wrote a little outliner program to make following Randy Ingermanson’s “Snowflake Method” of writing a novel easier. I put it up for sale and have been selling a copy or two here and there ever since. As it ends up, somewhere in the last two computer crashes I’ve [...]

Your Characters Aren’t You

by Randy Ingermanson
Note: This article is reprinted with Randy’s permission.

At least twice a month, I get a letter that runs roughly like this:
"Hi Randy:
I’m writing a novel about something horrible that happened in my life. Nobody would ever believe what those dirty rotten scoundrels did to me, so I’m making it a novel. It’s [...]

Practical Pointers on Plot Pacing

by Randy Ingermanson
Note: this is a follow up from yesterday’s article, and it originally appeared in Randy’s eZine. It is reprinted here with permission.

Last month we talked about the theory of pacing. About how when you have a fast-action scene, you spend a lot more words, showing every detail of the action. And when you [...]

Pacing Your Novel

Note: This article is reprinted with permission.

by Randy Ingermanson
When I sold my first novel, one of the comments I got back from the editorial team was this: "The pace for this novel was perfect — never too fast nor too slow."
I was surprised, because I’d never thought much about pace. Certain things come easy to [...]

Hewn out of the Living Rock

OK, so I’m currently reading "King Solomon’s Mines” by H. Rider Haggard. And I came across a passage that describes something that was “Hewn out of the living rock,” and it occurred to me that every single book I have read where any action takes place in a cave or near a cliff has that [...]

Mark Twain’s Rules Governing Literary Art in Domain of Romantic Fiction

Mark Twain wrote these rules in his roast of the novel “Deerslayer” in an essay titled Fenimore Cooper’s Literary Offences. I didn’t write them. He did. Don’t get mad at me. There’s some good reminders in here for us writers.
Rules 1-11 he considered to be the big rules (hence the bigger font), 12-18 are the [...]

Another Fantastic Full Screen Text Editor

Sheesh, it hasn’t been two weeks since I dumped my long time full screen text editor JDarkRoom for Q10. Now I may very well have to switch again. I happened (via Twitter) across yet another full screen text editor that does everything I think it should. This one is called Write Monkey.

And boy, oh, [...]

Q10: My New Favorite Text Editor

I have remained faithful to JDarkRoom for a long time now. Every time I wanted a full screen text editor, I knew exactly where to go.
However, A short while ago I began cheating on JDarkRoom. Today I dumped it entirely. I’ve found a new full screen text editor. A sexier full screen text editor. In [...]

Coauthoring Without Murder

by Randy Ingermanson
reposted with permission
"We’re Best Friends Forever," she said, tilting her head toward the woman sitting beside her at the dinner table. "And we’re writing a novel together. Isn’t that COOL?"
I nodded noncommitally. "Sounds . . . great." We were eating supper at a writing conference and I was hosting a table and trying [...]

What is Censorship?

Recently, I saw that someone tweeted a story about Deseret Book stopping the carrying of Stephanie Meyer’s Twilight series, at least on the shelves.
http://www.sltrib.com/themix/ci_12193772
Along with the link, the tweet said “How I hate censorship.”
Is what happened really censorship?
My feeling is that a business decision is not censorship, regardless of who owns the bookstore. If [...]