Long before Arthur C Clarke coined the phrase “any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic,” before Howard Taylor riffed on that claim to assert that “any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a big gun,” and probably even before Mark Twain wrote A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court, people, and especially writers, have been fascinated by this idea of an equivalency between science and magic.
Essay Arguments
In school, you were probably taught three types of essays: narrative essays, expository essays, and persuasive essays.
Marriage in Speculative Fiction
Love and marriage, as the Frank Sinatra song tells us, go together like a horse and carriage, and while I by no means desire to disparage the institute, that might be a problem when it comes to writing speculative fiction.
Sympathetic Nature
That single, two-word sentence sent me along a tangent about the role and purpose of imagery and sympathetic nature in writing, and why certain concepts, like that of lightning flashing, have such a powerful, dramatic effect on a scene.
Failing Writing Aliens
I wanted to dedicate a post to a specific aspect of writing science fiction: writing aliens. Or, as the title more accurately asserts, failing to write aliens.
Why I Don’t Outline
Considering my general temperament and proclivities in other aspects of my life, you might expect me to be an outliner. Except…I’m not. Not at all.
Effect and Cause
A recent Writing Excuses episode to which I listened discussed the ideas of disordered storytelling, and means of writing stories that are intended to be read in an order other than from the first page to the last page. Unfortunately, it didn't really dig into the topic the way I hoped it would engage with it.
Schlock Mercenary Study
When I noticed recently that he had officially finished the comic, I decided to give it another try, and this time I got through it. I got through all of it, one comic at a time, twenty years’ worth of them. It is epic scale storytelling in a short, web comic format.
A Common Mythos
I came across this essay recently on "The Power of Our New Pop Myths," which makes the argument that franchise-based storytelling in the style of Star Wars or Marvel is popular because it fulfils the same societal needs that have historically been filled by religious storytelling.
Blood and Dragons “Behind the Scene”
This is your spoiler warning. If you haven't already read both parts of Blood and Dragons, I do not suggest that you read this post.
IGC Publishing 