Concentrate your narrative energy on the point of change. This is especially important for historical fiction. When your character is new to a place, or things alter around them, that’s the point to step back and fill in the details of their world. People don’t notice their everyday surroundings and daily routine, so when writers describe them it can sound as if they’re trying too hard to instruct the reader.
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Defending Jacob trailer
Coming April 24.
Victor Hugo
Portrait of M. Victor Hugo (1879) by Léon Bonnat. Click for hi-def image. (Via)
Art Is Hard
It certainly is. Buy it here.
Moby Mobile
Animated book covers is simply too good an idea not to happen. (Artwork by Javier Jensen.)
A character who yearns
All works of fiction are built around a character who yearns, and if you’re in touch with what the character is yearning for, then every detail is filtered through that emotional center.
Happy reading
This new ad campaign for Penguin Classics is lovely. (More here.)
Neil Gaiman: Make Good Art
When you start out on a career in the arts you have no idea what you are doing. This is great. People who know what they are doing know the rules, and know what is possible and impossible. You do not. And you should not. The rules on what is possible and impossible in the arts were made by people who had not tested the bounds of the possible by going beyond them. And you can.
Neil Gaiman, “Make Good Art” (read it here)