Posts by Pam Uphoff

Multiple Threads

One of the responses to our request for “what do you want the Mad Genii to blog about” was how to handle multiple story threads.

Answer: First learn to juggle . . .

Okay, not helpful.

So think about these multiple threads. And especially, how do they relate to each other?

In the most straightforward, you have a group of comrades with common loyalties and so forth. So the BIG STORY PROBLEM is important to all of them. So even thought they split up, they’re all on the same page. Defending the Kingdom, the Free Asteroid Miners, the Source of All Magic, whatever.
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The Disorganized Muse

I’ll be out of reach when this goes live, so I’ll ask my fellow Mad Geniuses to add helpful suggestions and answer questions.
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In an orderly Universe the ideas for stories in a series would come sequentially, in proper order.

Unfortunately, Chaos rules this Universe, and is concentrated in my subconscious, where my Muse usually resides.

So, how does one deal with a minimum of three ideas (a new one pops up every time I get to a scene I don’t want to write, but really need to) at once? Well, since hitting your desk with your head has never worked (for me, give it a try if you want) I generally try to force some degree of order to the tangle of my imagination. Read more

Hi There!

How Do You Do?

So . . . what’s the best way to introduce a new character?

“Whatever works” is unhelpful. So I went spelunking for some examples out of my own stuff, to try to analyze.

A recent addition to my usual:

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Rael spotted the four of them, with an interesting mix of body language. Joke stiff and affronted. Lenny’s head swinging back and forth, trying to watch the others. Tall blonde and handsome grinning. The younger one with brown hair had his hand over his face. Talking.

“Ice, swear to The One I can’t take you anywhere!”

“Not my fault I keep getting accosted by beautiful women . . .”

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So, Ice is tall blonde and handsome, used to attracting women, and brashly responding in an inappropriate manner. His so-far-unnamed companion is younger, brown haired, and gets embarrassed moderately easily.

This all works because of the emotions on display. Joke, who is female, affronted and stiff. Ice grinning, his friend embarrassed. It doesn’t read like bare descriptions. Read more

Almost November!

Are you ready?

Yes, it’s almost NaNoWriMo time!

National Novel Writing Month is an old favorite of mine. Of eight years, I only crashed and burned once, and six of the books I wrote have been published.

https://nanowrimo.org/what-is-nanowrimo

Now, that doesn’t mean my reaching the goal of 50,000 words written in November means I’m ready to publish! There’s always editing! Last year’s effort wound up getting interwoven into something else—and published. After a lot of polishing.

But how would you like to have a 50K rough draft on December One?

I use NaNo as a yearly tune-up, thirty days of writing and never stopping to edit or polish. Thirty days of pushing to write regularly.

If you’ve never tried it, do. It might work for you, too.