In Building Better Plots , Robert Kernen provides a quick quiz to help you decide if your subject matter is strong enough to sustain a novel. I thought these questions would be a good platform to start . . . more

For our discussion tonight, I'm throwing out some comments by David Gerrold in Worlds of Wonder. Make of them what you will: If you want the reader to believe something impossible, you have to find . . . more

A few weeks ago, one of the members of this group asked if we could discuss scenes and scene transitions, so that’s what we’re going to do. (But if you'd rather discuss something different, . . . more

In Writing Fiction, Jane Burroway suggests asking what your character wins by losing and what he loses by winning. Such a conundrum adds depth, irony, and subtlety to your book, and keeps it from . . . more

Scarlett O’Hara was originally called Pansy. If Margaret Mitchell had kept that name, would this character from her epic novel ever have become so popular? I doubt it. A Pansy would be sweet and . . . more

The title of a book is important. It’s the first thing a prospective reader sees . . . or at least it used to be. Now the author’s name comes first and apparently is a much better selling . . . more

According to James N. Frey in How to Write a Damn Good Novel , protagonists should always be determined, willful; have a ruling passion; act out of a complexity of emotions and motives, contradictions, . . . more

I like my characters and don’t enjoy hurting them so my novels tend to focus on unraveling the mystery of the situation, because one thing I do understand is that at the heart of all books is . . . more

Change is the reason for a story. Without change, you have an anecdote, perhaps a description of a life or a time, but no story. Every time there is change during the course of the story, and more immediately, . . . more