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

It will come as no surprise, I hope, to learn that I am a huge fan of E.M. Forster. His writing is excellent, his understanding of motive is divine, and he's a sappy romantic - what's not to like? So when I came across plot problems in my reading of late, I immediately thought of Forster's simple parable of plot. It goes something like this: The King died and then the Queen died. This is not a plot; it is a story, a mere recitation of events over time. The King died and then the Queen died of grief. This is a plot. The key is causality - one event caused the other. Lately, in my reading, I've come across two different plot problems that have been bothering me. These are those: 1. All story, no plot. I recently read a book that, when I started, I was totally psyched about. "Finally!" I thought to myself, "I will get to talk about a book in my blog, because I love this book! It's so insightful and well-written and fresh and I heart it!...

Most YA writers today did not have cell phones when they were 15 years old. Think about that for a second. The people writing books for teenagers right now - the ones who aren't still teenagers I mean - didn't spend hours and hours on the phone talking or texting. They didn't IM, or at least not to the degree that teenagers do now. They weren't "wired." And this lack of technology has been a problem in some books I've been reading lately. Not that every book has to be TTFN, focused on the new technologies of the day. In fact, I personally prefer to keep the tech in my books to a minimum, because nothing will date book faster than technology, except pop culture references (more on this in a later post). So I get why an author would decide not to have his main characters chattering away on cell phone all the time. Watching a character do it is not necessarily more interesting that listening the guy in front you at line Starbucks do it. But there'...