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dandylyon85

Hemingway's Iceberg

One thing I see students doing repeatedly is over-worldbuilding.  They get the idea that to make their worlds absolutely real, we need to know every scrap of backstory, and to have detailed schematics on every piece of technology.  The problem: this slows the pace and takes the focus away from the story.  So I routinely […]

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Are You in Omniscient POV? Or are You Head-Hopping?

So at tonight’s SNW, one of the questions that came up was on the difference between head-hopping (a generally accepted no-no) and omniscient POV.  The key here is to remember that the omniscient narrator is a persona, who happens to know what is going on with your characters, while head-hopping happens in limited third person, […]

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Character Development and Development as a Writer

On Friday, we had a meeting with the new/returning  Work Study Employees for the kids/teen camps.  I asked them all to tell each other their majors.  When they’d gone around the room, one of them jokingly asked, “So what’s your major.” “Life,” I said.  And it’s true.  I finished my last round of formal education […]

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Physical Description

So I thought I’d kick this off with a few of my favorite things. Bicycling into the sunset, a really good chocolate cupcake, The Princess Bride. Let’s focus for a moment on that last one. I’ve spent the morning putting together my PowerPoint for the character development session of the class I’m currently teaching, and […]

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