Five things Andy Remic has learned about writing

In my last post, I challenged four other authors to blog about five things they've learned about writing. The first of these articles is now live at the blog of Andy Remic, author of War Machine. His article includes this seasonally appropriate bit of advice on plotting: Your story should be like a Christmas tree. You’ve got your central plotline, the trunk, which starts at the base with lots of different branches arcing away, so maybe A needs to find B, take it to C and destroy it with Z. From this trunk, as the novel progresses, secondary plotlines evolve and are completed, all branching from the main plotline; as you reach the end of the novel, the secondary plotlines must be shorter and shorter, as the pace increases, and then you reach the glittering star- or the climax- of the story J. Check out the whole article at Wired, Weird, and Wonderful.