Orson Scott Card

“To get away from the distractions available on screens, what about using a typewriter to write?” I remember when electric typewriters weren’t on the horizon for me. I learned on a genuinely old-fashioned manual typewriter, where you had to strike the keys with hammer strength.…

“How do you know your writing is better than AI?” Because my writing comes from a human mind, with a life's worth of experience and thought behind it, while AI is a cleverly programmed bit of software designed to fool naive humans into thinking that there is such a thing as…

“My teacher says the most valuable and beneficial type of books are novels that, through storytelling, inject philosophy, psychology, and history into the mind—especially when written with elevated literary language?” I disagree on a couple of points: 1. Elevated literary…

“He decided to take a step. By habit he used his left foot, raising it off the ground and placing it 18 inches ahead of his right foot. Then he shifted his weight onto the left foot so he could now raise his right foot and shift it forward till it was, not 18, not 19, but 20…

“How can I maintain tension across chapters of a book without exhausting the reader?” What exhausts the reader is long stretches without tension. Don't worry about your story being TOO exciting. For most readers, there is no such condition. In the first chapter, you will set up…

How do writers know when to abandon a project?  1. When you stop caring, and writing feels tedious. 2. When you find yourself wanting to skip ahead to the “good parts.” If what you're writing now is not a “good part,” it doesn't belong in the book. Either cut it and skip to a…

Books that have not lost their appeal after multiple readings: Pride & Prejudice Lord of the Rings The Stormlight Archive The Trees, The Fields, The Town, by Richter The Princess Bride Gone with the Wind The play The Importance of Being Ernest The Book of Ruth Dawn's…

Entering our 250th year as a nation, I think of this quote from Lafayette on the 50th anniversary: "Now liberty has a country."  We have not always behaved well. We have been dumb and self-destructive at times. But we have also rescued beleaguered nations and peoples. We have…

How do you describe a magical object that the whole story depends on? Don't describe it in the narration. Instead have a viewpoint character examine it and react to it. It then becomes possible for another character to notice other aspects of it, or to have a different attitude…

Unless you write in your sleep (I've tried, but it generally comes out as pages of dddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddd), all of an author’s writing, including dialogue, is deliberate. But dialogue, I believe, is the most natural, unaffected, and fluid…