We're a little less than two weeks out from the release of the next Blood Magic episode: Who's Afraid of the Dark? Instead of subjecting you to another of my lengthy, rambling, sometimes off-topic blog posts, I'm instead going to post a preview of that episode to maybe drum up some excitement for Blood Magic. I know that, coming off of writing episode seven, I'm once again excited about writing this series. So, without any further ado, I present Doil in Blood Magic S1:E8.
Narrative Physics
With a title like that, you’re probably expecting a how to write type of post, walking through the disparate functions, actions, and reactions of the narrative structure. That’s not what it’s going to be about, but I wasn’t able to come up with a better title. I think that you’ll understand once you’ve read it. This is one of my occasional writing philosophy posts, although in this case it’s actually drifting more into the realm of just straight philosophy. The premise: the narrative is the quantum mechanics of human beings.
Literary Murder
If you've been writing for awhile, you've probably reached a point in a story where you've had to kill off a character. I don't mean a minor character or a world character who pretty much exists just to die on a main character's sword - I mean a point where the plot and the characterization and the whole story demand that a character you have worked with and developed and followed through thousands of words must die. Maybe you knew this was something that would have to happen from the time you started writing the story, or maybe it was something you weren't expecting before you reached the scene and realized there was no other good choice. Regardless, it's never an easy thing.
IGC Story?
It's a question I get all the time: will you ever write an IGC story? A sort of autobiographical account of your time as an agent of the Intergalactic Coalition, with special emphasis on your last six thousand years or so of service here on Earth?
Uniting Contradictions
Perhaps it’s not terribly surprising then that I try to avoid introducing contradictions into my fictional worlds. For most of the time that I’ve been writing, I’ve operated in world creation under the premise that contradictions in world-building will drive readers away and make the world less believable. After all, overt contradictions would seem to undermine the idea of plausible impossibility, and leave the reader less immersed in the world. A contradiction can act like a sort of car accident that abruptly stops the flow of traffic and ejects the reader from the story.
Understanding Belief
It is absolutely essential that we keep our minds open to alternative explanations for the universe in which we live and with which we interact. Just because one explanation is the accepted explanation doesn't mean it is "right" - there may not even be a truly "right" answer to a lot of the deep, probing questions about the universe. If we hew too strongly to a single explanation simply because it is the one that is commonly accepted, then we will inevitably be scoffed at by our ancestors the same way we scoff so readily at those who did not accept Copernicus's teachings.
On the Border
This is another one of those “why write” posts, where I talk about why I write and why I read. I’d like to address something that I think I’ve alluded to in a few different places on the site or in previous posts, but never really explained fully. Now, everyone writes for different reasons, and everyone reads for different reasons, so by no means am I trying to assert that anything here constitutes some manner of ultimate right or wrong. Which leads nicely into what I actually want to talk about, because I don’t think that we should look to stories to tell us right from wrong.
No Review This Week
For all of you who were eagerly anticipating my review of the China book, I’m sorry to disappoint you. It’s a pretty heavy book (after all, there’re several thousand years of history to cover), and it’s taking me longer to get through it than I had hoped. This is not helped by having been rather … Continue reading No Review This Week
A Certain Point of View
It's been awhile since we've posted a writing technique post, so coming off of reading Steering the Craft, it seemed like a good idea to share a little more of my continuing efforts to improve my writing. Specifically, I'd like to talk about points of view, because I realized as I was reading Steering the Craft that I might have been thinking about my POVs incorrectly for years. For those who aren't familiar, POV (point of view) is the literary term for the perspective from which a piece is written.
Keep Dreaming
I've seen a lot of commencement addresses for the class of 2020 recently, an outpouring of advice prompted by the lack of a more traditional ceremony because of the coronavirus-related lock-downs. If we're being completely, brutally honest, most of them have similar themes, and say similar things, and convey similar messages, whether they're from a celebrity, a political figure, or a businessman. I generally skim through a few of these as I'm reading the newspaper, but one title, or rather subtitle, caught my eye. It didn't catch my eye for being resonant with me, but rather because it was so completely contrary to any advice I would ever give anyone, if I were in any way qualified to give someone advice. It was talking about the important of letting go of myths of greatness.
IGC Publishing 