It took growing my confidence as a writer, and reflecting on oral storytelling traditions and the performative nature of language, to realize that storytelling isn’t a one-way street, that I am not so much telling a story, dictating it via text, as I am sharing it with a fellow traveler along the journey that the story describes.
A Short Story Argument
Think of argument as how a story bridges to reality
Choosing Viewpoint: The Third Person Omniscient
If we look back at the origins of storytelling, I posit that there are two natural viewpoints from which stories can be told: the first person past tense, and the third person omniscient.
Choosing Viewpoint: The Third Person Limited
Third person limited past tense might be the single most dominant viewpoint in genre fiction today.
Choosing Viewpoint: The First Person
This first post will cover the first person past perspective and the first person present perspective, the next post will be on the third person limited past and present perspectives, and the third in the series will address the third person omniscient in past and present tense.
Predicting the Future of Science Fiction
If we don’t have a vision for the future, the future might never arrive.
Fantasy’s Four Eras
Modern fantasy can be divided into four eras, but there first came a zeroth era which I call the pre-fantasy era.
Time Travel through a Story
No, this post is not about time travel. Instead, this is a selfish post prompted by issues I’ve been working through with regards to my current novel project, Impressions, and it will focus on how to progress a story through time.
Fictional (Un)Just War Theory
A fantasy story I was reading recently which featured an alternative world setting and so forth, happened to mention war crimes. It presented this as natural and expected, except that the world-building did not support it.
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It's why authors should spend more of their time thinking about limitations than capabilities, because that's where they'll find the most interesting stories.
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