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...
by Melinda Snodgrass | Oct 22, 2015 | About Writing
I like movies. I like to go out to the movies. So today I went to the movies. A lightning strike had fried my old modem so I headed out to Best Buy to buy a replacement. The Best Buy is just a few short blocks from the movie theater here in Santa Fe so I decided to run by and see what might be playing at around 1:00 p.m. Turned out THE INTERN starring Robert de Niro and Ann Hathaway had a 1:10 showing. I had wanted to see this film so I went in bought a ticket and a hot dog and settled...
by Melinda Snodgrass | Oct 9, 2015 | About Writing
There’s a tendency in writing for people to think that if a three ring circus is good a five ring circus must be better and a seventeen ring Circus must be awesome. Except it’s not because a lot of stuff happening doesn’t mean it’s exciting. In fact it’s usually means that things are confusing for your reader/viewer. Worse it suggests that you as the creator don’t have a clue what you’re doing. That you’re just flinging stuff at the wall and...
by Melinda Snodgrass | Jul 23, 2015 | About Writing
For those of you who may not have seen season three of this show be warned; there may be SPOILERS! Let me say right up front that I think this show is terrific and that Maslany simply brilliant. Kudos to the Emmys’ for finally figuring out how to get her a well deserved nomination. But….. I think this season was weaker then seasons 1 or 2 and I think that was due to a couple of things. One was the focusing more on Allison then the other clones. While Maslany’s...
by Melinda Snodgrass | Jun 17, 2015 | About Writing
Today as I was working on the second space opera novel, EVIL TIMES, I was faced with the perennial science fiction problem. What do you do about animals on alien worlds? Or in a fantasy novel? In my universe Old Earth is a climate change decimated hell hole. The capital of the Solar League is on a planet called Ouranos, capital city Hisselek. Naturally Earth animals have been brought with the settlers, but there are local fauna as well. The problem isn’t that there are going to be...
by Melinda Snodgrass | May 29, 2015 | About Writing
Yesterday I finished reading the second book in Ann Leckie’s series, ANCILLARY SWORD. I really enjoyed this book, and it was in this volume that her use of only the female pronoun “she” was revealed to me in all its true genius. I was suddenly aware of a subtle bias in myself that I had hitherto been completely unaware existed. HERE IS A SMALL SPOILER *********************BEWARE*********** One of the sub-plots is about the heir of a house or “daughter of the...
