Roger Floyd's Website

As a writer, I’m curious.  What is it about writing that drives us?  Why do we sit in front of a computer or a pad of paper or a typewriter, whacking away at those little black keys or scribbling black words on a piece of paper, developing words and phrases and sentences, many of which…

What is “Life?”  Have you ever thought about it (outside of high school biology class)?  I’ve been thinking about it lately, and a new concept has occurred to me.  I’d like to look at “life” in a slightly different manner. If you look up the word “life” in a dictionary, you’ll find a rather long…

Ian McEwan is not one of my favorite writers, but that’s because I’ve read only one of his books, Solar.  On the other hand, if all his books are written like Solar, he may never be a real favorite, though he has a lot to recommend him. Solar is all about Michael Beard, a Ph.D. physicist…

Are we alone in this universe?  Certainly not. Are we alone in this galaxy?  Again, no, though the chances are a miniscule bit higher. One question that seems to dominate the news about astronomical subjects over the past several years is that of, “Are we alone?”  That is, are we the only intelligent species in this…

What language is your novel written in?  English?  Mine too. But I write science fiction, and that brings up a special point.  If a sci-fi novel is written in the near future here on Earth, with characters who live and work in a world that is virtually identical to the world in which we all exist,…

Writing is a challenge.  Lots of things are challenges.  Life itself is a challenge. I just received the latest copy of the alumni magazine from the college I attended.  (Never mind how long ago.)  It occurred to me as I looked it over that college was, in a word, easy.  Not easy in the sense that…

In this day and age, as so many Americans are taken to the hospital or the morgue because of gunshot wounds, it’s not supposed to be appropriate to appear vitriolic in print or rhetoric, but with the 25th anniversary of the Challenger disaster coming up on January 28, I’ve decided to say a few words…

I’ve read a lot of articles and books about writing, and most of those have had at least one nugget of useful information for a beginning writer.  But I’ve also read a few articles that have left me shivering.  The most recent example of the latter appeared in the December, 2010, issue of The Writer.  Entitled “Making time to write,”…

Back on 12/7/2010, I posted an entry about redundancies, and suggested that writers should be careful to check their work to avoid petty redundancies that detract from the message of the work.  Here’s a few more.  Some of these are well-known phrases which have redundancies built into them, some are statements I found in other’s works,…

I read somewhere, and not to long ago either, that every story, no matter how short, should have a plot and a subplot.  At first, I thought this might be difficult for some stories, especially the really short stories that have come to be called “flash fiction,” or sometimes, “short short stories.”  After all, I thought, how…

As a new writer with little publication credit, I’ve been told the characters in my book must be fully three-dimensional in order for the reader to identify with them.  And identify with them they must.  Characters have to get inside the reader, inside his/her head and bounce around in there like old friends coming over for a Christmas visit. …

As a writer of fiction, I have yet to be published.  I’m still learning how to write believable fiction, feeling my way along the pathway to publication.  I’ve read books and many, many articles in writing magazines.  I’ve gone to writing and science fiction conventions, and talked to published writers and listened to them as they…