Writing a whole novella of backstory: excerpts from Joe Hill interview

I love reading through the short story magazines I'm subscribed to: Clarkesworld, Lightspeed, Nightmare, and Fantasy & Science Fiction. So potent. Novels, even good ones, often run the risk of losing the potency that a lot of short stories can retain with ease. That's part of the challenge of course.

I finished up the July issue of Nightmare Magazine today. It wasn't my favorite issue fiction-wise but the non-fiction worked for me. I really liked the interview with Joe Hill, who is the son of Stephen King apparently. Will have to check out his latest novel, NOS4A2, at some point.

What I'm Currently Working On

I've been working hard on my plots. Changed the focus of the novel and honed it down to one central protagonist with a single main goal to provide some real drive to the story. Thanks to the great recommendation from my current writing teacher, Dennis Foley, I'm using beat sheets to help me outline better and more simply. Foley's Writing The First Novel class is great, by the way. Already into Week 5 of it - excited for even more insights awaiting me in the last half of the course. Beat sheets are the outlining method used in Hollywood (where Foley started his writing career). Just write out each beat that's necessary for moving the plot forward, then go back over it and divide them into scenes/locations. So simple and so useful.