There’s clearly nothing wrong with being inspired by history for your writing – historical fiction is a genre, after all – but Impressions has me pondering how closely a fantasy story can hew to real history without confusing or distracting the reader.
Defining The End
I hear other authors who are true discovery writers talk about their stories taking them by surprise, or their characters wandering off in an unexpected direction, and these things do not happen to me.
Why War
The point is not in the specifics, but in prompting you (and me) to consider these things when we write. I’ve said it many times, and I’ll continue saying it; the most important decisions you make in your story might be the ones that you don’t even realize you’re making.
The Autodidact’s Greatest Gift
I hear people say that the internet is making them less intelligent, and I don’t understand, because the internet is to me a reminder of just how much there is to learn.
Teamwork Sometimes
I don’t deride teamwork to the extent that Rand does, but neither do I hold it up as a veritable moral imperative demanded by a collectivist deity…and given the current context, I consider that we are in far greater danger of too greatly lauding the team than we are of not valuing teamwork sufficiently.
New Old Stories
It is reductionist and unimaginative to contend that there are no new stories to tell, akin to the assertions that history is just a cycle that repeats itself. As long as there are new people, as long as the world is changing and entropy hasn’t prevailed throughout the universe, there will be new stories.
Wondrous Tales
All of this reflection, eventually, produced a name for the sense I had for what was missing in my writing and what unifies the pieces I enjoy the most: wonder.
Beyond Word Count
I find word count provides helpful insights into my writing habits and the structure of my stories. On shorter time scales, though, it doesn’t always reflect the amount of writing work I might be doing.
Imagination Vs. Extrapolation
Imagination isn’t just thinking about what could be. It’s asking what if anything could be.
Something New
The problem is that when most people think of how new ideas come to be, they envision the end result as some instantaneous, intuitive leap, but the reality is that new ideas don’t come about so spontaneously.
IGC Publishing 