How Do I Know What I Think Until I See What I Say?

Today, while I was proctoring an exam, I wrote the ending of Electric Boogaloo. Let me back up - in addition to my day job as an attorney, I also teach for The Princeton Review. I usually teach LSAT prep, but today I was proctoring an SAT exam, which is always interesting because the people in the room are the people who I hope will one day read my books. So I view it as sort of research. But I also view it as boring. The SAT takes approximately 6 million hours to take, and the only thing worse than taking it is sitting through it without having my whole future rest on it. There's not even anything at stake! (I'm sure the people taking it would kill me if they heard that.) Anyway, I usually take my computer so I can write during the exam. Even though I am supposed to be working on TNP, I was in an Electric Boogaloo mood today, missing the characters, so I finished a scene in that manuscript. But after I finished that scene, I was sort of stuck. I've always known h...

One of the writers in my writing group, Cinda Chima, has written three related books (check Cinda's stuff out here ) and while we were reading the third book for her, she had some questions about how much information to include about what had happened in the prior two books. Her books weren't sequels, like Electric Boogaloo is, but the question is still a tricky one, because you have to assume that a large portion of the readership for the second or third book are going to have read the first one. Since her books were related, but were not direct sequels (meaning each book focused on a different main character, but the books took place in the same world as each other, and some of the characters overlapped - a main character in one book, for example, becoming a supporting player in another), Cinda wanted to make sure that she included enough information for the new readers without boring the returning ones. It's a tricky balance - how much back story to include. This is t...