by Melinda Snodgrass | May 1, 2018 | The Craft of Writing
Sunday I completed a scene in The Currency of War and realized that there was a lightness in my chest and that sense that I’d just taken a sip of champagne. I always get that feeling when a project tips over and I’m into the end game. Before this point it always feels like I’m climbing a very steep hill as I put in place all the pieces, make certain that every character’s motivations are clear and believable. And then I’m like a downhill skier gaining speed...
by Melinda Snodgrass | Oct 26, 2017 | The Craft of Writing
I am a naif in the ways of Amazon so today a good friend, Sage Walker, was guiding me through how to look up Amazon rankings, etc. As you all know I don’t read reviews. If they are positive you get a swelled head. If they are bad it just makes you feel shitty and helpless because at that point your book is published and there’s not a damn thing you can do to fix whatever the reviewer (or random person on Amazon or Goodreads) thought was wrong with the book. But as I was discovering where to...
by Melinda Snodgrass | Sep 21, 2015 | The Craft of Writing
There’s this concept in screenwriting that we call “hanging a lantern on it”. It basically means that we point out something before it can trip up an audience. By acknowledging that we are aware of the problem/issue we reassure the audience that we know what we’re doing and they can sit back, relax and take the ride with us. It came up in my spec Edge script. I had a beta reader point out that somewhere my Prometheus character has to point out that he will use any...
by Melinda Snodgrass | Jul 31, 2015 | The Craft of Writing
Since I have a computer in L.A. I don’t travel between Santa Fe and Westlake with a computer. I figure I can read and listen to music during travel times. But on this trip home I had figured out the next scene and I badly wanted to get it down. So I fell back on a technique I haven’t used in decades. I took a notebook with me and wrote it out in longhand. When I first started writing I did everything by hand and then transcribed it on the typewriter. It takes double the time...
by Melinda Snodgrass | Jun 5, 2015 | The Craft of Writing
One of the questions over on Facebook was what was the origin of the IMPERIALS series. It was actually a reaction to the Return of the Jedi. Certainly an inferior film compared to the first two Star Wars (though it looks like Shakespeare compared to what followed). But I digress. So here we are, Victor Milan and I watching Return of the Nehi… Jedi when suddenly there’s another damn Death Star, and it’s not really only half-built, it’s a trap. I leaned over to Vic...
by Melinda Snodgrass | Jun 5, 2015 | The Craft of Writing
We’ve been discussing my writing process over on Facebook, but I thought I’d move the discussion over here to the website. These space opera books are going together differently then my other novels. I plot very carefully, I know all the big “tent pole” scenes that need to be in a novel. I know the little fiddly bit will occur to me as a write, but on these books I finish a chapter and have often moved several chapters beyond it when a scene will occur to me that...
