A fun new way to explain that gun on the wall...

[alfreda89]

Things are always interesting over at http://www.nielsenhayden.com/makinglight/ . Here's a new version of "If there's a gun hanging on the wall in the first act, it had better be fired by the last act."

“The author makes a tacit deal with the reader. You hand them a backpack. You ask them to place certain things in it -- to remember, to keep in mind -- as they make their way up the hill. If you hand them a yellow Volkswagen and they have to haul this to the top of the mountain -— to the end of the story -— and they find that this Volkswagen has nothing whatsoever to do with your story, you’re going to have a very irritated reader on your hands.” —Frank Conroy

Comments

[jacardie.livejournal.com]

This only serves to remind me of how many bloody loose threads I've got in the book I'm working on right now... *sigh*

No,big, as Kim Possible would say.

[alfreda89.livejournal.com]

You have a list where they are, right? You can resolve them later -- or you may find that they resolve as the book aims for the climax!