link salad

Bleh. My brain is not yet co-operating this morning. Or even functioning, unless piecemeal and incoherent can be counted as functioning.

So, out of town for a day or so, and again the blogosphere trots out the wisdom. (I'm sensing a pattern here.) New entries to the memories page:

• Paperback Writer on constructing characters
  (I don't tend to go into this sort of detail, myself. I have done, but that was for a novel I was writing in high school, from memory. Yet to see completion. Better to say never to see completion, although I may loot the corpse for the cool stuff one day.)
• Elizabeth Bear on naming characters via their tombstones
  (Now this is a nifty trick. I am so going to try this one. It's similar to Paperback Writer's quick characterisation questions: who are you? what do you want? what's the worst thing that could happen to you?)
• Athenais' readers on naming characters, answered separately by Jo Walton and Sarah Monette
• Elizabeth Bear on cover versions as an allegory of Story vs Book
• Jim McDonald at Making Light on novels and models (and Bear's response)
• Neil Gaiman on "finishing":
  

  You don't have to like it, just be ready to do the next thing.

• Wen Spencer on past tense, backstory, and reader's perception