The language we use has meaning and depths we don’t always consciously recognize, and stock phrases often convey meanings and suggestions which we don’t fully recognize and which we probably don’t intend when we deploy them in our writing.
Tress of the Emerald Sea Review
I resolved to pick up something that I was confident would scratch that itch and remind me how much I truly enjoy stories. Sanderson's Tress of the Emerald Sea seemed the perfect vehicle, and I was right.
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.
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.
Blood Magic S3:E7: A Matter of Facts Release
Arval is building a flying machine. That’s the plot, such as it is, of A Matter of Facts, one of the lightest episodes of Blood Magic in the whole series.
Blood Magic S2:E6: Contaminant, Part One Re-Release
In the original release post, I claimed that Kiluron and Doil needed more active roles, and that this should not have been a two-part episode. I disagree with my former self.
It’s a Not-So-Small World
couple of days, and I will get to my destination quickly, with readily available food, shelter, fuel, and other resources readily available in familiar forms all along the way. I can get in an airplane and fly anywhere in the world with a minimum of effort and time expended. Even more remarkably, I can take out my phone and conduct a live video conference with people in a dozen different countries, and we’ll hardly notice a delay.
Make Anachronisms a Thing of the Past
I don't actually know how much this post will help you in ridding your works of pesky anachronisms, but the title just seemed to clever to resist. If you're not already familiar, an anachronism is a literary, spatial or temporal (usually temporal) transplant. A detail, a phrase, an expression, a device, or really anything else could be an anachronism; most commonly these are stock expressions or devices of our own time that we accidentally put into our works. Nor are they unique to literature, as there are plenty of examples in movies and other media. For instance, perhaps a period movie might show cars from a later model year driving around in the background. Or my personal favorite, when an author or screenwriter has archers "fire" their arrows, an expression which could not predate the advent of firearms. This last one even made its way into The Lord of the Rings movies (notably during the battle at Helm's Deep).
IGC Publishing 