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Mary Sue is that perfect character who can do everything more than just well, but with excellence, even on her first try. In most cases, she is the author's wish-fulfilment self, consciously or not. Who doesn't want to be good at things and well-liked? Or the hero of the hour, solving insoluble problems and rescuing her friends?

It's an odd madness that some writers are subject to - one of their own creations seeming to have an independent life, despite still being inside the creator's head. On writing fora everywhere you'll find complaints about the characters not doing what the plot requires of them, or doing unexpected things that throw the plan off course.

You'll also find people - sometimes authors who haven't experienced this, most often non-writers who have no idea what it's like - asking questions like "you invented the character, the setting, and the plot, can't you control what happens?"

If you've ever experienced this, you'll know that the answer is "no, not if you want the story to work!"

Ever since Scrivener reached 1.0 and went on sale, it has been getting rave reviews all over the web. I figured it's long past time I wrote up a bit of a formal review, as I've been using it since the early beta days in November of 2005, and recommending it to everybody, everywhere.

Scrivener is a writer's program for Mac OS X. It costs $35 US, and worth every penny. It's deliberately priced lower than most programs that aim for the same market, because it's intended to be affordable to those who don't (yet!) make money from their writing as well as those who do.

Since there's no way I could list all of its features here, and since that would be silly anyway, I'll just talk about what I particularly like about it, and how it works for me.

When a hundred things happen but only ten are relevant to your plot (and only one actually important to the plot), you could at best call your story 'scattered'. All of these extra things take up space in your story, distract your reader, and confuse the issue. They may be fun and interesting things - they must be, otherwise why would you have included them? - but if they don't help your story, they're extraneous.

If you're choked by the fear of writing something that isn't up to your own standards, or even just a little indimidated by it, you're definitely not alone.

Some people freeze, and never write. Some people write, and refuse to let anybody see it because it isn't good enough. Some people play tricks on their inner editor, by doing "dare to be bad" type challenges. There are all kinds of coping strategies.

I've been writing a novel for the past several months and some of my characters speak with accents. I've read that many writers and editors advise to NOT write the words phonetically as it can become irritating to the reader. Instead they advise you to write the words correctly, but using improper English grammar common to people from that geographic location.

Most of us ignore the daily influx of spam; we've either trained ourselves to look over our inbox quickly and delete the offensive, the inane, the nonsensical, the pornographic, or the  just plain weird.  Some have taken a more technical approach, applying filters to either their clients or their servers to search for keywords, analyze patterns, check against blacklists and whitelists.  ISPs have begun offering spam protection on their mailboxes, and most corporations deploy some form of protection as well.  With all of these anti-spam measures in place, the spammers have had to become slightly more clever in their unending quest to enlarge our penises and breasts, increase our stamina and decrease our mortgage rates, lower our blood pressure and our prescription drug spending.

Surely, something positive can come from all this.

The "rug jerk"¹ ending is one that doesn't follow the story's internal logic, and leaves the reader feeling like they've just had the rug jerked out from under their feet. It is, in short, a surprise ending that's too surprising.

The key difference between a rug jerk ending and a surprise twist ending is that on reflection or a second reading, the rug jerk still doesn't make sense.

I'd like to try something a little unorthodox here.

I'd like to try to explain something about writing by talking about drawing. Don't worry -- it isn't a painfully drawn out, clumsily symbolic allegorical exercise or a quaint Zen parable or a cute gimmick for familiar pedantry.

Instead, it's as literal as words on paper.

While the pronoun "I" invites a reader into the life of the narrator, the word that reaches out across the gap between the writer and his audience is the second person, "you." Deft use of the second person, along with understanding of your audience can draw the reader into your work, but this power is not without risk. It can also backfire if the reader doesn't identify with the role you have created, and end up alienating him instead.