It is a pleasant change to find a nonfiction book which is heavy on nonfiction and light on narrative.
Types of Stories
Storytelling theory has potential as another tool in the writer’s toolbox, and it was with that mindset that I became intrigued by a 2016 paper purporting to identify six basic emotional arcs which all stories share.
The First Men in the Moon Review
The First Men in the Moon can barely be considered science fiction at all. It is better thought of as adventure/horror with science fiction elements. If you read it in that guise, perhaps you will enjoy it more than I did when I was seeking a classic science fiction book.
The Physicist’s Rabbit Hole
A good storyteller, like a good engineer, needs to know what assumptions to make, and be aware of the assumptions which could undermine a project.
The Shadow Rising Review
Wheel of Time, to a certain extent, works by leaning into tropes and making them more, rather than avoiding or subverting them. The advantage of a story sprawling across fourteen books is that what starts as a trope can be fully developed and made into as unique a part of the worldbuilding as the most inventive, original aspects.
Unsympathetic Characters
The simplest advice for writing unsympathetic characters is to think of the traits that make it hard for you to sympathize with real people.
Nicomachean Ethics Review
After reading philosophers’ ideas of morality and ethics from Plato up to Camus, I remain convinced that Aristotle’s core idea – virtue is the mean between two vices – is the most insightful, and the most useful, standard of ethical behavior we as humanity have.
Languages in Fiction
Language is a funny thing, and for all authors should be preoccupied with it, we sometimes seem to forget to reflect linguistic variety in our fiction.
Romance of the Three Kingdoms Review
Sometimes likened to a Chinese Odyssey, the story is epic in a literal sense, at some eight hundred thousand words over one hundred twenty chapters, and its structure has more in common with modern storytelling than you might expect.
Plot Timing
If you want to tell the story of, say, the rise and fall of a civilization, or even an institution, in a way to fully capture it, you are often left to tell the story of a snapshot of that institution and use it as a lens by which to examine the rest.
IGC Publishing 