Weekly Writing Update

It was not entirely intentional, but this week became a Blood Magic week - almost all of my writing time went to either Trust but Verify, which will be August's episode, or a secret Blood Magic-related project that will be announced in a few weeks.

The Golden Verses of Pythagoras Review

An unusual two star rating might be another example of the importance of managing readers' expectations, because this text was definitely not what I was expecting, and my appreciation of it was consequently diminished. That being said, even if I had known what I was getting into, I'm not certain that I would have found very much to appreciate about Pyhtagoras' and his fellow cultists' "golden" verses, sentences, sentimets, statements, and so forth.

Society’s Origins

When I unearth an article that I can make applicable to writing and storytelling, I have no compulsions against sharing it with you.  This week, that’s a paper from Science Advances on how societies initially arose: “Disentangling the Evolutionary Drivers of Social Complexity: A Comprehensive Test of Hypotheses.”

Dialogue Short Stories Reviews

I made an exception this past week for a pair of short stories (they could almost be called flash fiction) that Brandon Sanderson recommends for studying dialogue.  Since the stories were fine examples of both storytelling and writing craft, I decided to share a review for them, along with a review for Sanderson’s contribution to this technical style.

Logical Fallacies

A logical fallacy is a systemic flaw in the sequential process of deriving conclusions that can occur in any application of that method of deliberation, and can result in achieving erroneous end states.  Significantly, it does not include cases of failure to implement logical processes in the first place, nor does it apply in most cases to innate traits of neurophysiology.

Announcing: Books to Read

Those detail-oriented readers may notice a change to the site's main menu. The "What I'm Reading" link has been changed to "Books to Read." This is part of a series of small changes I'll be implementing over the next few months to better emphasize to potential visitors what the site is all about, and what they can expect to gain by coming here.