description – The Writer's Den

Yesterday, I dragged a couple of friends along to do some writing research with me. I got everyone up super early, jammed them all into my tiny car and drove all the way up to the Peak District (a National Park in England).

Why? A couple years back, when I was doing the final expedition for my silver D of E award (for you Americans, that’s this strange hiking/community service/skill/sport award given out by Prince Philip), we were taken to the Peak District in Derbyshire. On one of our last days of hiking, we climbed to the top of ‘Thor’s Cave’ and I was absolutely captivated by it. We passed by it too fast, though, so I never really got any good pictures of the place.

Stupid as it sounds, I’ve never been able to get Thor’s Cave out of my head and, ever since, I’ve really wanted to use it as a setting for this one novel of mine. But whenever I’ve tried to write any scenes there, they’ve been dry and I’ve just felt uninspired. So, yesterday, I decided to visit.

To be honest, the trip was kind of more of an excuse to get out of my delightfully boring home town than for the sake of writing, but it actually turned out to be super useful.

I documented the whole experience with pictures and voice recordings, noting down all the things I missed last time or just didn’t remember about the place. Here are a couple of things I learned about my setting:

Continue reading “Research” →

Now, I’ll have to admit, when I was first introduced to screenplays, I thought they were pretty lame. All dialogue. Almost no description. The page looked practically naked. Empty. Without the stylistic adornments and embellishments of fine literature. I turned up my snooty nose, tossing page upon page of screenplay away, swearing that I would only ever write novels.

Now, several years later, after writing a few screenplays of my own and gaining a little bit more maturity (I hope), I’ve come to realize that screenwriting and novel writing are not that different. Readers, after all, are just like a movie audience: they’re both sitting there expecting a story to be told to them. The only difference is that readers experience the story playing out inside their heads instead of up on the big screen.

Recently, then, I’ve been approaching my novels in a cinematic way. And I can’t tell you how much I think my writing has improved. Here are just a few of the lessons that I learnt about novel writing from screenwriting.

Continue reading “How Screenwriting Made Me a Better Novelist” →

Book Rec of the Week

Anathem by Neal Stephenson

“It’s a huge ambitious book of the kind that only science fiction can produce. It’s a whole world of funny words and nifty ideas to sink into. It is also unquestionably one of the most important books of the last ten years, one of the things that in twenty or thirty years we’ll look back on and say, “Yes, that’s what science fiction was up to in that non-decade that began the new millennium.” We won’t be saying this from our retreats in giant clock monasteries, but then nobody ever suggested we would.”

-Jo Walton, Tor.com

suggestion made by NaNoWriMo Coordinator Ari Reider

“One big reason I loved Anathem was for its worldbuilding, creating a fantasy-style world based on mathematical principles that was not only incredibly creative and unique, but also fleshed out and developed enough to be a believable and compelling world. The twists and turns that the story takes were also a huge draw to me. The book also raises a number of scientific and philosophical questions that I still think about more than ten years after reading it for the first time. The book is a little daunting in terms of length, but I remember it being very worth the read.”