Jim Butcher's Blog, page 2

Dresden Files
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"Literacy"
I read the first three of these books on a reccomendation from a bookseller. He said they had been very popular among the younger crowd. I had just read the His Dark Materials trilogy on his word and it left me with such a profound satisfaction at the end that I was open and eager to suggestion. Silly me.
The Dresden Files novels are some of the most devisive, contrived stories I have ever read. It was like torture reading these books and by the third one I wa

THE GREAT SWAMPY MIDDLE

Every writer runs into this, generally in every single book. The middle. It lurks between the beginning of your book and the exciting conclusion, and its mission in life is to Atreyu you right down into the yucky, mucky mire in order to prevent you from ever actually finishing.

The Great Swampy Middle (or GSM) knows no fear, no mercy, no regret. It doesn't come after you. It darned well knows that you're going to come to it. It knows that you're going to be charging

So your story is all about conflict, right? And you can't have conflict without, well, people. Maybe your people look like sentient renaissance mice, or maybe they look like talking cats, but there are going to be beings running around your story with a bunch of conflicting desires. Those are your characters.

Sticking with the purely craft-oriented standpoint, we'll start with a basic question: what makes a good character?

FIRST AND FOREMOST, FICTION WRITERS, YOUR CHARACTERS MUST BE INTERESTING