Yes, this story is only nine thousand words, when many other two-part episodes have been closer to fifteen thousand words apiece. So? A short story is not a bad story. Sometimes, a short story is actually a better story.
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.
Weekly Writing Update
It was not entirely intentional, but this week became a Blood Magic week - almost all of my writing time went to either Trust but Verify, which will be August's episode, or a secret Blood Magic-related project that will be announced in a few weeks.
Verdon’s Tragedy Sneak Peek
As you hopefully saw in our recent weekly writing update, I finally finished the first draft of Verdon's Tragedy, a side story set in the Fo'Fonas world. Even if revisions go smoothly, I don't expect a release date sooner than December 2022, but I want to share some thoughts about the story and the writing now.
Weekly Writing Update
Time to start another month already, and we're over halfway through the year. You can tell, because we're halfway through Blood Magic's third season with this week's release of Blood and Dragons, Part Two.
Society’s Origins
When I unearth an article that I can make applicable to writing and storytelling, I have no compulsions against sharing it with you. This week, that’s a paper from Science Advances on how societies initially arose: “Disentangling the Evolutionary Drivers of Social Complexity: A Comprehensive Test of Hypotheses.”
Blood Magic S3:E6: Blood and Dragons, Part Two Release
If I’d plotted the series differently, this could easily have been the climax, the final episode, the end of it all. I didn’t, though, so I hope that means that you’ll all now be on tenterhooks about what the real ending might be like.
Dialogue Short Stories Reviews
I made an exception this past week for a pair of short stories (they could almost be called flash fiction) that Brandon Sanderson recommends for studying dialogue. Since the stories were fine examples of both storytelling and writing craft, I decided to share a review for them, along with a review for Sanderson’s contribution to this technical style.
Weekly Writing Update
Between finishing Verdon's Tragedy and making progress on Trust but Verify, I didn't have a lot of time for other writing this week.
Definition, Connotation, and the Function of Language
A long time ago, there were no dictionaries, no modern language associations, no Oxford standards. Language is a fundamentally organic system that has been evolving for thousands of years, as complex and intricate as something like the economy, and for most of its existence its rules have not been explicit.
IGC Publishing 