by Melinda Snodgrass | Jun 22, 2024 | About Writing, The Craft of Writing
As a reader I’ve tended to prefer science fiction to fantasy, with a few exceptions. The Lord of the Rings is one of my favorite books and I go to Middle Earth whenever life feels too stressful. But about a year ago I had this idea pop into my head and I can’t shake it. So now that my space opera, Imperials, is finished, and the Carolingian series about the war between science and rationality and superstition, religion and magic is also finished. (Those books will be going live in the...
by Melinda Snodgrass | Jan 29, 2024 | About Writing
Yes, that is meant somewhat ironically because this is a long and tedious process. First you have to have the team who are able to prepare the covers properly, do all the interior layout and then someone to prepare the manuscript for all these different places. Thank the gods I have Jeffe Kennedy and her extraordinary team to assist me and Jeffe to teach me. The one really big wrinkle in all of this has been Bowker that sells ISBN numbers. Note that in Canada they are provided to authors for...
by Melinda Snodgrass | Jan 26, 2024 | About Writing
I do outline my novels. Not in the same detail that I would outline a script, but it’s important to me to know the major beats ie the tent pole scenes that will carry me to the various act outs, but there are a few limited time where I let the flow of the story and the actions of the characters show me the way. It’s one of the reasons I can’t jump around when I write. I have to experience the events of the story along with the characters in a very linear fashion. I spent the...
by Melinda Snodgrass | Jan 15, 2023 | About Writing, The Craft of Writing
I’ve always been a writer who outlines. I got a lot better at it once I worked in Hollywood and learned how to “break a story”. For an in-depth look at how that works check out my blog post called How I Plot. Point being, I’m a bit of a dinosaur, I like to outline the way I was taught in LaLa Land using either a white board and different colored pens or a cork board 4×6 cards and different colored pens. However, many of the programs I use have added plotting...
by Melinda Snodgrass | Apr 28, 2021 | About Writing, The Craft of Writing
I mentioned on Twitter that I was getting ready to outline or break two new novels, and a follower asked if I could describe my process. It ended up being a really looong Tweet thread so I thought I would pull it all together here for folks who might not be on Twitter. I always outlined from the time I first started writing, I think it was a function of having been a lawyer and knowing that a brief has to take a judge or a jury to a certain conclusion so structure is important. I’m also...
by Melinda Snodgrass | Jul 10, 2020 | About Writing, The Craft of Writing, Wild Cards
I was scrolling through Twitter this morning and came across a gif of a group of cows jumping over the white line on a road. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eHneXbfFwsc And it reminded me of a funny Roger Zelazny/Wild Cards story. Also how Roger was freaking brilliant and one of the finest writers ever to grace the field of science fiction and fantasy. Anyway, we were working a particular volume — Down and Dirty — where Roger’s iconic character Croyd Crenson aka The Sleeper...
