Day: December 1, 2015

Writing Advice - Craft & Process

Surprise, Delight, Pizza, and Writing

As a writer, one of your chief weapons is surprise. Surprise and delight. Surprise and delight and properly crafted reader expectations. Surprise, delight, properly crafted reader expectations, and…well, in my case, incredibly long blog posts where I blather on about things.. Surprise, delight, properly crafted reader expectations, incredibly long blog posts, and…Well, I could go on. You have lots of weapons. You are a veritable weapons master as a writer.When the battle-axe doesn’t get the job done, you swap it out for shiruken. Or a trebuchet. Or a fighter jet. You are basically like one of those RPG characters you get in computer games that doesn’t give two figs for encumbrance;  load up on all the weapons and use whatever you’re going to use. But today I wanted to talk about surprise, delight, and properly crafted reader expectations, because for my money they’re among the three most useful tools in a writer’s arsenal. First, though, an anecdote: A TALE OF