Search results for ‘i give you my body’

Ever wonder what I do as an author? How do I write my books? What is involved in publishing them? Below are some essays and thoughts about What I Do and about writing in general: Too many descriptions of eyes and expressions in your writing? In a short blog post on Valentine’s Day, I discussed evoking emotion and thus avoiding an excess of eyes. From February 15, 2024. Example of (William’s) Internals. Happy Solstice! Example of a character’s internal reactions, first posted in a discussion on The Litforum. Released on Thursday, December 21, 2023. Using excerpts from Book Ten of my Outlander series of novels, I discuss Dialogue (“The Three Musketeers”) and Emotion (“In the forest.”) From November, 2023. The question I hear often is “So…. how did you get the idea to write these books?” “My Writing Process” explores this question and other topics. How do I do the background research for my writing? Do I really write everything in a piecemeal fashion? Plus I discuss my categories of […]

Tonight is the Vigil of Easter, a service where we hear readings from the Bible regarding God’s deliverance of His people (e.g., the flight from Egypt and the path through the Red Sea), the reading of the Passion (the description of Jesus’s condemnation and crucifixion), and the Resurrection. Catechumens (the people who wish to become Catholics and have been taking instruction) will be baptized, and others confirmed. It’s a time of mingled sorrow, hope and joy—the coming of Easter. For the moment, I thought I’d post the following snip from BEES (the chapter titled “Metanoia”), as it’s rather apropos. (Tomorrow, I’ll post a new excerpt as an Easter egg. <g>) [Excerpt from GO TELL THE BEES THAT I AM GONE, Copyright © 2021 Diana Gabaldon] A stack of these broadsides had been left on the breakfast table; he’d caught a glimpse of one headline as Germain had gathered them up and tapped the pages tidily into order before putting them in his bag: THE TRIAL AND EXECUTION OF HENRY HUGHES [&hellip;]

On March 6th, 1988, I began writing a novel. For practice. I didn’t intend to show it to anybody, and had no idea what it might turn out to be about. I just wanted to learn how to write a book. And I did. <g> So, here are TWO brief excerpts from the tenth offspring of that line, to mark the 36th <cough> anniversary of the beginning of OUTLANDER. [Excerpt from Book Ten (Untitled), Copyright © 2024 Diana Gabaldon] [Excerpt One] How to pack for a rescue operation in which one has no idea where one may be, for how long, or under what circumstances? Clothes… well, the possibility of having to hob-nob with the sort of people who would be disaffected by my normal wardrobe was remote, but couldn’t be totally discounted, either. We might need the good will of someone with influence. I had two gowns that might be called decent, one of which needed mending… but the thought of someone with influence ineluctably switched my mental gears [&hellip;]

Someone on another site asked about the ongoing writer’s problem: How to Show/Handle Emotion. As it was, I’d just written this bit (along with a lot of surrounding text), and thought it might be a good, fairly brief example. So here’s the excerpt, with the Writer’s Note explaining technique at the end, for those interested. [Excerpt from BOOK TEN (Untitled), Copyright © 2023 Diana Gabaldon] William stood still, listening as he slowly wiped soot from his fingers; the leaves and fruit of the apple trees had escaped burning, but not the clouds of smoke that must have rolled out of the burning cabin. Who had lived here? He wondered. Had it been at night, the place caught afire from a careless spark from the fireplace? Or maybe a cooking accident, where the woman of the house caught her apron alight and in her agitation, chucked it away onto something flammable? He wandered round the empty shell of the house, breathing the thick air in tiny sips through his mouth. There [&hellip;]

October 25, 2023 Phew. Two Busy Weeks! Did an event for a private club in NYC, then whipped home and repacked my suitcase for the Surrey International Writers Conference, in British Columbia (that’s in Canada). Got home from that yesterday, and now I’m in California (not working—taking a wee break). Anyway, since some folk here seem interested in the nuts and bolts of writing (beyond just enjoying the story), I thought I’d maybe post basic notes for the Dialogue workshop that I taught at the conference, followed by one of the pieces (of Book Ten) that I used as an example of same. So… DIALOGUE Like a scene, a good line of dialogue often has more than one purpose. It should have at least one. You don’t need to know the purpose as you write, but when you read over something you’ve written, you should be able to point to any given element—be that a line of dialogue, a descriptive phrase, a plot point—and say why it’s there. I. PURPOSES [&hellip;]