My Agent Told Me To Make A Blog

Exciting plots are all about unexpected twists and complications. Just when it seems things are going right, boom, a new problem for the characters to deal with, or a game-changing revelation. Some general writing advice suggests that if you get stuck, throw a wrench in the scene and see what happens. Vet medicine involves plenty of wrenches, too. Maybe it's helped me developed the skill of dealing with the wrenches, but I imagine most jobs do. It sure gives good fodder for creating the wrenches, though. Smooth day? Dog fight or car crash arriving in ten minutes. Classic symptoms? Diagnostic tests negative for the suspected disease. Seen a few guinea pigs and rabbits? How about a sick sugar glider. (Staff: "I didn't even know that was an animal.") All of these can be turned into plot devices: Smooth day? Dog fight or car crash arriving in ten minutes. - Finally solved a plot problem or resolved an argument? Explode something in the room. Classic sympto...

Today's setting inspiration is brief, but sometimes that's all you need to add some flavor to atmosphere and worldbuilding. This isn't even that clever or original, it's just a thought I had--something that would be nice to include as one element of many. Underwater tunnels. There are two ways I can think of utilizing this. One is the classic underwater city, which I think could go in many directions culturally. We won't talk about the Gungans , but in general this is a relatively common society design in sci-fi. Some of the factors that might influence the society would be whether or not the species is amphibious (or can otherwise breathe underwater), whether the city is meant to be a secret, and what the surface is like. There's a big difference between a community that has solid trade with land-dwelling societies and a unique aquatic industry, versus one that's completely isolated and hidden away from some enemy seeking genocide. My other idea is eq...

I find the concept of good and evil overly simplistic. I'm not going to say I automatically hate it. That would rule out so much great fiction, like Lord of the Rings , Star Wars, and Supernatural.    Oh yeah and that really good season of Constantine that went the way of Firefly. Anyway, a lot of the good vs evil thing comes from religion, and fiction based on religious mythology is naturally going to incorporate it (such as the aforementioned Constantine or Supernatural , also Stargate SG-1 , come to think of it). Some of the really great classics also handle it tactfully, because they're giants and founding fathers of their genre (LOTR and Star Wars ). However, in more contemporary, non-Biblical fiction, I think the idea of good vs evil is starting to get stale. As fiction and literature evolves, we're more and more interested in shades of gray, moral ambiguity, antiheroes, ethical quandaries, and unclear or sympathetic villains. The bad guy who's a ...

The name of the game recently has been POV swapping. The novel I'm editing, The Pull of Gravity, has four main point of view characters, on top of a non-linear structure (two parallel timelines). The result is quite a juggling act, and I seem to need to re-balance the POV structure anew each draft. Let's call the characters thusly: - MC1 - MC2 - SC3 - SC4 (MC = main character; SC = side character) Originally, everything was a mix, based on the order of events. There also existed a SC5 and SC6. Those characters no longer get point of view sections, though they're still in the novel--that was step 1, reducing the sheer number of POVCs. Step 2 then became fixing the order. The two timelines are Before and After . SC3 and SC4 only appear in the After timeline. The other two appear everywhere, because it's primarily their story. To smooth out the helter-skelter POV switching, my agent suggested sticking to a more predictable order, eg MC1, MC2, SC3, SC4, repeat. ...

For some reason, clients all think wet food is bad to feed your cats. I ask what they're feeding, and they shuffle around guiltily when they admit they give canned food along with the dry. It completely baffles me why this happens. I guess pet owners go around telling each other about how wet food is bad for the teeth. Kind of like how they tell each other grain-free will fix all your pets problems. Well, here's a tip for you: Wet food is really good for cat kidneys and bladders. Feed them both. Teeth, I can fix. If I can't clean them, I can take them right out. Kidneys, on the other hand? 50% of all cats die of kidney failure. There's an adage that any cat who lives long enough will get kidney disease. Because my stack of vet school notes was about as tall as I am, you may not be surprised to learn I didn't ship them all back with me when I left New Zealand. Therefore, I no longer have access to the names and dates of the key studies regarding feline kidney...

If you are a writer without a writing group, go get one now. I have peers who go to regular face-to-face groups, and I was forever jealous of them. Online critiquing is advantageous because you can more easily find writing partners who match your tastes and skill level, as opposed to whomever is geographically close. That's where the magic of voice conferencing comes into play! Here's my suggestion: meet your perfect writing partners online through critiquing websites, then create your own face-to-face-at-a-distance group! My writing group took a bit of doing to get off the ground. It started with me and one other person occasionally brainstorming over Skype. We then invited another and had a few haphazard discussion meetings, which petered out as we got busy. Finally, we invited a fourth person to round us out, and I decided to put my foot down and make us a schedule. Now, we meet every Sunday at a designated time (which took some figuring out, between the US, Canada, Sw...

The admissions committee settled into their cushions and pulled up files for the next round of interviews. The youngest sipped her spiced coffee as she straightened the stack of digital papers in her lap. "Iari Lenerian," the oldest read off a list. "Twenty-two, male, homeworld RG-Gamel-6-WH." A hint of a frown clouded his eyebrows. "Undergraduate in chemistry from Lenar Memorial University." "It's an accredited school," the youngest said. "I know, I know." He scrolled through the record. "Pretty rural, though. Gamel sector's out in the Fringe, isn't it? His travel expenses would be almost as much as tuition." "He has perfect grades. And his personal statement was quite touching." The oldest glanced up at her with skepticism. The middle interviewer pulled white hair back into a ponytail, her own pages haphazardly cast around the floor in front of her seat. "You have such a soft spot for the...

Surviving vet school required developing some skills I'd previously lacked. In undergrad, I never really needed to study--go over the notes once or twice before an exam, and I'd be all set. In vet school, on the other hand, they piled knowledge into your brain, and when that was full, they started stuffing it into your ears and your nose and your throat too. You physically run out of time in the day. For instance, reviewing my notes from small animal medicine--reading through each lecture once --took a full 12 hour day before the exam. To compensate, I had to make myself study, properly. Third and fourth year involved many 8-hour days of lectures (all new material) interspersed with 8-hour days of labs. If you didn't keep up, you'd get buried under an ocean of notes at the end of the week/month/semester. So I forced myself to keep up. I'd sit in the library before going home and read over the notes from every lecture each day. Every lecture. Every day. I'd ...

This might be cheating a bit--a way of sharing some fun pictures for no real reason--but I betcha I can tie it into writing somehow. Dunedin, New Zealand, is home to the steepest residential street in the world . Naturally, we made it one of the stops on our journeys. The bench at the top: Turn around 180 degrees and this is the view: Down at the bottom, there's even a gift store with magnets and bumper stickers. It's a completely unremarkable section of the city, and the store is tiny, but it's somehow both very touristy and very everyday. Lots of people drove to the bottom to see it, or walked up the steps along the side, but not so many at once that it felt crowded. A number of brave souls, with cars less tiny and useless than mine, drove all the way up to the top. We had a different plan. We had leftover cherry tomatoes that weren't good for eating anymore, and brought them up with the intent to roll them back down. Considering the steady strea...