author control

The book that only you can write

3 Comments / author control, creating a world, Ideas for a New Story, personalize, Uncategorized, Voice, Writing /

The first book I envied was Bel Kaufman‘s Up the Down Staircase. It should have been my book! I knew what it was to cherish language and literature. Like Kaufman’s main character, I was naive enough to think I could instill an appreciation for truth and beauty in my teenage students. My days often felt insane. Why didn’t I put […]

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The Novelist as Control Freak

14 Comments / author control, character change, creating a world, fiction, good characters, The Girl on the Mountain, Writing /

It’s been noted before that one of the pleasures of writing fiction is to create and populate a world. How God-like! But novelists get to go farther than God, because they’re engaged in the business of fiction. Without someone manipulating every word and deed, fiction has no life. Writers have control, baby. So writers get to project events as they’d

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