Category: Magical Words

Other Cool Blogs: Magical Words 5/25/2011

Erin Penn

Photo by Albie Patacsil on Unsplash

IFM vs. Railroad

What is the difference between “It’s Fucking Magic” and Railroad?

After reading Kalayna Price’s “The Ugly ‘Because'” (Magical Words 05/25/11):

I did a deep dive in my head. I HIGHLY recommend reading the post (again, the link is above) and the related comments. This topic travels through plotting, to character agency, and worldbuilding.

Everything created by authors is whole imaginary cloth. Yet, not.

Sometimes IFM (It’s Fucking Magic) is the correct reply for worldbuilding questions. “Vampires don’t work that way.” and “Faster than light travel needs some scientific base, which string theory or gravity might cover.” — IFM dude.

But if the reader is going, “Vampires don’t work that way according to how you defined your world, why is this one different?” – if the answer is, “I needed a good vampire to contrast against the bad vampires, so I railroaded the characters to doing what I wanted.” Yeah, no. That is bad writing.

“Because I say so.”

Laying down tracks and tying characters to them so they cannot deviate from the story from start to end is going to create a very boring story. 

Yes, the characters are made up. And yes, really, everything in the end is “because I said so”. But the world and characters you created must act within the parameters of the world, and not just the railroad tracks of the story. Characters are not IFM when they decide to break up with their fated mate, just because the darling makeup scene needs to occur in two chapters.

Because. Not a good reason when an adult tells you are five, and still not when you write a story at fifty. If you write a “because” story, your reader is going to ask “why”.

Other Cool Blogs: Magical Words 8/7/2010

Erin Penn

109910321 © creativecommonsstockphotos | Dreamstime.com
“Terms and Definitions Every Writer Should Know” by Edmund Schubert (Magicalwords.net, 8/7/2010):
I’m just gonna leave this here. The vocabulary list includes Idea File, Voice, On Spec, First Rights, Reprint Rights, and a couple dozen other words about writing, editing, and the publishing business. Tax season is lingering again, and I don’t have much juice today. Even so, this is a GREAT list – go read it.
What word were you unfamiliar with? Respond  below.

Magical Words 10/29/2009 – On Writing Comics

Erin Penn


Photo by Yulia Matvienko on Unsplash

I love my comic book prose, and comic book artists have always amazed me, but I’ve never really thought about what went into writing a comic. I figured something like an outline, maybe.

C.E. Murphy gives insight into the process with her “On writing comics” Magical Words posting from 10/29/2009. If you ever thought of writing or doing art for a comic book, give it a look-see:

Other Cool Blogs: Magical Words 6/8/2009

Erin Penn

Image courtesy of Stuart Miles at FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Trust Your Reader

I written this many times while editing.

David B. Coe experienced it from the other end with his editor directing the words at him, and he defines the situation quite well in his 2009 posting, including some of the big red flags so you can self-edit those and provides possible solutions for the self-edit. The full post, Trusting Your Reader: The Writer and the Reader, Part I, is here:

Remember, don’t preempt your reader’s sense of discovery. Trust them to remember things which happened just three pages ago. Let them figure out the person is a jerk by the way they talk and act; you don’t need to reiterate it writing in the narrative “John thought privately James is a jerk, as did most people James met.”

Too Much Information is annoying when a person is reading. It takes all the magic away.

Magical Words – The Muse

Erin Penn

Image acquired from multiple Facebook postings

What’s your muse?

Most people, when talking about a muse, describe a gentle being wafting words and images. It makes writing easier. “Oh, I can’t work today because I’m not INSPIRED.” (delicate hand on brow)

I’m going to change this up to food. Some people don’t cook unless INSPIRED. Until hunger starts edging them on. And this is all well and good for one person.

But if you got a large family, waiting for inspiration, or at least enough hunger that you are interested in putting together a meal, just doesn’t work. You have to plan in advance, walk into the kitchen at a certain time, and get it done. Because you are not the only person to be considered for the meal.

This is the difference of writing for yourself and writing for eventual publication. The small private muse and the monster muse. You want money with writing, you want publication, your muse needs to be hard-core day-in-day-out. She will lift weights daily; the hard-core muse doesn’t just drop by on a Saturday afternoon for tea once and a while. You got to plan her workouts – either daily 500 count word sprints or three hours set aside on Tuesday night when the kids are at practice. Whatever gets her to the gym – or you in your chair regularly.

You want to eat and put a roof over your head from your writing? Or at least write something other people will read? The alabaster muse needs an accident.

Here are a couple of the Magical Words postings about the Muse. By the way, Faith Hunter’s muse is not alabaster – and he has helped her pound out over forty manuscripts.

6/23/2009 – Misty Massey – Sneaking up on the muse –
1/28/2014 – Faith Hunter – Rules of Thumb –