Favorite Genre of Fiction

My favorite genre of fiction to read is fantasy.  I do like some science fiction, horror, and some thrillers.  But I often return to fantasy because it seems to capture -- for me, at least -- everything that fiction "should" be.

Music and the Creative Process

Do you need absolute silence to write?  Or can you handle some background noise, maybe even some music to help your creative juices get going?

Most Comfortable Place to Write

Some people can put pen to paper (or fingers to keyboard) anywhere at any time.  Middle of the night on a work day?  Not a problem.  On a crowded subway car?  Good to go.

Is There an Ideal Character Age?

Some writers are great at writing old characters or very young characters.  They have a gift to get inside the thoughts and convey the emotions of people who are of drastically different age.  Others like to keep their retinue of characters around the writer's actual age, as a sort of virtual entourage.

First stories and characters

Every writer has to start somewhere.  So what was you first story about?  What sort of characters did you have?

The Best Ways to Name Your Character

Everyone involved with creative writing has to come up with good character names.  Of course, "good character name" means something different to each of us.  If you think about it, there's a number of characters that you've read over the years that stick in your mind -- either because of their actions in the story or because of their name.  Some authors are particularly good at creating memorable names (Dickens and Rowling, for example).

With the popularity of role-playing games, this topic has expanded past the creative writer.  How can you come up with a good name for use in a computer game?

How Many Characters is Too Many?

Some books have scores of characters, providing the ensemble cast through which the author tells the story (for instance, the Lord of the Rings trilogy has loads of characters, most of them minor).  How many is too many, though?