Building Plot

To me plot is a hugely important thing. Without using this device correctly, I believe you can't really put together an engaging story, novel, novella, etc. If you're taking a trip to someplace, you get out the map, (or nowadays the GPS) and make sure you have pinpointed your destination. If you don't you are very liable to get lost. It is the very same thing with writing...you get in the car (in this case the car is the story or book you are reading) and you meet people and take in sites. I can't tell you how many times I have read a story or novel (and often by some big name authors) where you get to the end and you keep thinking, ok...they're going to rap this up on the next few pages or so. Then you get to the end and you find that all those loose ends weren't tied up at all. In effect, the author simply deserted you. It's kind of like being driven out into a desert and just abandoned! What's up with this? There is nothing quite so frustrating...and yet a lot of authors do it. Now I'm not talking about making flow charts and detailed diagrams of stories. But at least have a mental picture of where you COULD end up. A lot of times you will find that if you write something, and you are really into it and the characters grow, you end up with an even better ending sometimes if you had at least a general idea of where you were going and where you would end up. Don't totally rely on the growth of your characters to have them know suddenly how things are going to end. They don't really know either. That's your job as the author. You're the God of this world. So you need to have some order when you are writing. Don't build a house of cards and have it all fall to pieces at the end. Build from bricks, and if you do it right, the project will be solid when you finally reach the end. That's my two cents anyway.

Where do story ideas come from?

Many people ask this question of people who write. They ask all the hugely popular authors, they ask all the little authors, they even ask the novices like me. It seems like one of those amorphous questions that you can't really get a handle on. I think the answer isn't "where" you get your ideas, it's HOW you get them. I think it really is a matter of training your mind to think in a certain fashion. I read a great book one time, a book called "What if". I think that those two words pretty much sum it up. Writers tend to look at the world different than other people. They are more sensitive to things than other people are. Just put "what if" in front of a lot of things and I think you can generate a lot of possibilities. For example, what if the moon began to fall from the sky, or what if the earth stopped revolving. These of course are outlandish examples, but surely I am not going to post my "good" ideas, I'm not crazy! :) Yet. Feel free to post any methods you might use to stir your imagination. If you've ever gone to a writer's conference, they have all kinds of exercises to invigorate your imagination. Some are good and some are crazy. I'd like to know what you think.

Linking to Blogs

To All Visitors

Feel free to request me to link to your blog or website. I will evaluate your blog/website and if it looks well done and has no questionable content (i.e. no adult sites please) I will link to it via adding your link to my Blog. I will also be adding a page to my homepage dedicated entirely to blog and webpage links, so your link would appear there as well. The only thing that I ask in return is that you add a link to my blog/website to your blog or website. Building traffic for our blogs is a tough job, so it helps if we each help each other. The only other time I will NOT add a blog is if it very sloppy and amateurishly constructed. Who wants to link to a sloppy uncared for blog? Nice, neat, up to date blogs, however, will have no problems with me. Also, if you use Delicious Social Bookmarking, let me know your user ID (in private email if you like, my email address is on my webpage-check my COMPLETE PROFILE on the blog, in the right hand sidebar) and I will add you there as well.

Stay tuned. More to come!

My First Book

This is my first published book. It is available on Amazon.com

Nighthawk Short Fiction for Science fiction, Fantasy, and Suspense

Greetings!

This is my first BLOG. The purpose of this blog is to share my ideas in the areas of short fiction. I am a writer in the genres of Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Suspense. I have recently published my first collection of short stories entitled, "Twilight Ruminations". It is 6 short stories in the tradition of The Twilight Zone, Amazing Stories, and Weird Tales. If you like stories like that of the ZONE or Stephen King, you might consider giving my site a look if you like. Point your browser to www.rhscififiction.com to view my webpage. This is a "work in progress" and I will likely blog here to announce new features of the site as they become available. You will find information regarding both the book and myself. I also intend to eventually add snippets or "samples" of short stories I have written on a separate page of the site, and would like to include some sort of voting applet so that visitors who read these samples of short stories can vote on whether they like them or not. That way I can get an idea of what people are interested in, and in turn present it to my publisher for review if he should allow me to write another book. So please stay tuned. There is much more to come! Comments and ideas are always welcome!