Patricia C. Wrede's Blog

Happy Thanksgiving! Open Mike day matches up with Thanksgiving week this year–so what are the other Americans doing for Turkey Day?  I’m staying home, making lobster tails, pesto salad, cranberry bread, and my favorite veggie side dish while taking calls from my spread-out family members. I’ll get

Braided novels are a specific subset of multiple-viewpoint structure. In a braided novel, there are two or more protagonist characters who each have their own “A” plot-problem, which usually occur over the same time period and which come together in the same (or parallel) climax. The stories

What is a “B” plot? Like most writing jargon, it depends on who you ask. On the most fundamental level, the A plot is the main storyline, the central problem that, once solved, means the story is over. The dragon is dead/tamed; the war is over; the

Last week, I talked about some things to do with novellas (besides self-publishing them). Most of them involved ways of making them longer, essentially turning a novella into a novel. I’m going to do a post on the three things I came up with, starting with the

Curious about people’s thoughts on natural length. Mine seems to be the novella (first work was 26k and second is just under 50k) which is awkward for doing anything with in traditional publishing (and I am not cut out for self publishing). –Rose What do you do

Once, long ago, I heard a writer complain that writing descriptions of setting was “saying the boring part out loud.” Okay, obviously that person finds descriptions boring, probably as both a reader and a writer. If that’s you, my advice is to figure out what the minimum

October’s Open Mike has arrived! Chat amongst yourselves, brag, ask questions, complain about your WIPs, whatever you want. I am basking in the knowledge that I am in between the rough draft and the editorial revisions, so I actually have time for a few other things…

Over the years, I’ve noticed that at a lot of conventions, there’s a writing-advice panel with a title like “Picking Writing Tips and Tricks that Work for You.” They almost always end up going in one of two directions—either  they turn into a list of the tips

From the outside, publishing used to look a bit like an enormous skyscraper, maybe shaped a bit like a pyramid, with a tiny top poking out of the clouds above and a row of doors at the bottom with the names of editors and agents written on

“Practice drafts” are my least favorite thing about writing. It took me years to admit I sometimes need them, and longer still to actually implement them in any useful way, and I don’t use them very often even now. But when I need them, they’re really useful.