Writing Excuses 7.22: Microcasting

[mbarker.livejournal.com]

Writing Excuses 7.22: Microcasting

From http://www.writingexcuses.com/2012/05/27/writing-excuses-7-22-microcasting/

Key Points:
1. What are your thoughts on prologues? They can help, but they can also be a crutch. Good for epics, groundwork, setting.
2. Tips for using drawings to establish setting. Cheat! Implication and suggestion.
3. How do you name your characters? 1) Raid the spam box. 2) The Ever-Changing Book of Names. 3) behindthename.com and other online name sites
4. If you were doing it now, would you self-publish? Brandon: No. Big epic fantasies do better with mainstream. Mary: No. Too much overhead. Dan: No, prefer publisher.
5. How do you make sure powerful character isn't too strong? Weakness. Stakes outside powerful area.
6. How do you avoid too much foreshadowing? Write the book, and fix it in post.
7. How do you trim your fiction? Look for redundancy. Apply "In late, out early" to trim the start and end of scenes and chapters.
8. What about flashbacks? They can be useful. Make sure they are triggered by something the character is experiencing. Avoid flashbacks that kill forward motion.

"If you can make it work, it will work. Don't worry about rules telling you what you can and can't do." Dan
( The details... )

[Brandon] Okay. We are out of time. And... Oh, man, I had a good writing prompt, too.
[Mary] Write a flashback.
[Brandon] I guess, write a flashback. Sure, we'll do the easy one.
[Dan] In a prologue, with the mirror scene.
[Brandon] With the mirror scene.
[Howard] Oh, gosh.
[Brandon] This has been Writing Excuses. You're out of excuses, now go write.
[Howard] No, they have a very, very good excuse.
[Brandon] Yeah, I know. That was lame. I should've written it down. Oh, well.
[Howard] G'night, kids.