OK, I'll admit it. I'm a fan of a jillion different webthings. XKCD. TED. Questionable Content. BookCrossing. Wikipedia.

But here's a place that's pure gold for writers. With videos.



Wordplay. Over the past few weeks I've been doing more reading than writing, and this is why. K M Weiland has been running a series on novel plot structure, and I've been reviewing my own Work In Progress. And coming up short.

Basically, i didn't really have a climax in the thing. Oh, I sort of kind of had one, but it was more cerebral than anything else. The final twist, the thing revealed, the ah-hah! moment before all the loose ends are tied up and everyone goes home and lives happily ever after.

But a climax, K M tells us, is where your best and brightest and punchiest writing comes out and slams the reader around until they are stunned and panting and searching for their socks.

Yeah, well, I didn't have that, so I did a bit of thinking and realised that um, I did have a few elements in my plot that could lead to a bit of gunfire and violence and thrills and desperate conclusions and exciting escapes. It was right there in the story that I'd been setting up. I just hadn't noticed.

Funny that. All the work is done in the subconscious. The really good stuff doesn't need actual thinking effort, you just sort of hold the hose while it comes pouring out of somewhere below. Save the thinking for cleaning up and editing.

You're sleeping or doing the dishes and your conscious mind is either punching out zeds or swishing the suds around and somewhere underneath the real thought guts are paddling away hard, sorting out the characters and what they are doing and why and how and tickling all the pieces into place.

And next time you sit down at the keyboard, suddenly you think about your cardboard characters and they've developed minds of their own. Well, OF COURSE, they'd do that - why didn't I think of that before? And how come I never realised that Bill and Ben are cousins?

Odd, isn't it? It's all inside you somewhere, and when it crystallises, you don't need any thought to see that it's exactly right. It was always so and you just didn't notice.

Anyway, go off and read Wordplay. Watch the videos. Read the posts. And the guest posts. Get the free e-book. Just pour it all into your subconscious and go off and hit the gym or something.

I think I've got a good story now. Just a few more pieces need to be jostled into position, and I'm sleeping on that.