by Melinda Snodgrass | Apr 15, 2016 | About Writing
There have been questions about how I plot and outline. I learned this technique when I was working on Star Trek: The Next Generation, and it’s used on every television show. I use it for the movies I write as well. And then it occurred to me — this could work for novels too. Not in as much detail, not every scene, but the big scenes, the “tent pole” moments could be laid out. I’m going to actually put up a photo of the next Imperials novel, but please...
by Melinda Snodgrass | Mar 27, 2016 | About Writing, Blog, TV & Movies
I’ve done a lot of adaptations. It’s a tricky skill, but fun. You have to take from the underlying material the essential themes, the emotional sense of the work, keep the characters relatively intact, but be willing to make changes because film and print are two different mediums and they tell stories in different ways. The emotional impact is ultimately the same, but how you get there is different. You have to know what to cut and what to expand. Right now I’m watching...
by Melinda Snodgrass | Mar 16, 2016 | About Writing
I’ve been doing my final rewrite of the second novel in my space opera series. I’ve only got a couple of chapters to go before it’s as cooked as I can get it. Late this afternoon I went back to a scene that had stumped me earlier in the day. I realized I had used internal dialog where a son is reflecting on his father’s devotion to the ruling class and how the son rebelled against that. The moment just felt flat to me and then I realized, both men are in the same space. Why not have them...
by Melinda Snodgrass | Mar 6, 2016 | About Writing
Money flows to the writer. Not from the writer. That’s the rule. Remember it. Tattoo it on the back of your eyelids. Nothing makes me angrier then when I hear about an aspiring writer who had paid someone a lot of money to read their manuscript and comment. These so called “writing coaches” are preying on the hopes and dreams of people who want to write and it’s disgusting. They have no power to put your manuscript in front of an agent or an editor. They...
by Melinda Snodgrass | Jan 29, 2016 | About Writing
I’m tiptoeing up on the final chapter of the next novel in the Imperials series. Usually approaching the end of a novel feels like a toboggan ride, but this one has me groping my way toward the conclusion. I think it’s a combination of things. I can see the final scenes and how to present them if this were a movie where the camera itself can be a point of view but because this is a novel I have to present it through the eyes of one of the two view point characters. In this case...
by Melinda Snodgrass | Dec 2, 2015 | About Writing
Yesterday I completely rewrote a chapter because I had decided that a major event that had been the climax of the second novel in the space opera series was in the wrong place. What this involved was me walking away from the carefully and painfully plotted outline sitting on 3×5 cards on the cork board. But I did it anyway and spent a day of work redrafting an entire chapter. Then I came wide awake at 5:00 in the morning because I realized that I had just blown the end of this book. It...
