Medieval Stasis: Why is Fantasy Trapped in the Past
You're reading a story about a knight, a huntsman, and a wizard. They stumble across the ruins of a lost civilization, but something seems strange. That ancient culture seems to have had the same technology as the knight and his companions. Implication is that in the...
Series Mentality
Write one book, and you can feel confident in calling yourself an author. Write three, and you might make a career out of it yet. Write a dozen, interconnected and following a common thread of over-arching plot, and you just might be a fantasy author. What is it about...
Readers Are Rectangles; Writers Are Squares
All squares are rectangles, but not all rectangles are squares. Take that axiom from grade-school math class and replace "squares" with "writers" and "rectangles" with "readers." It holds just as true. There is no supplier-customer relationship that flows in a...
Worldbuilding: the Gift that Keeps on Taking
"I'm working on a story, but I'm stuck on the worldbuilding." I've heard some variant of this enough times that I felt the need to do something. Worldbuilding doesn't come first. It's like being unable to decide on the house you want to buy because you're stuck in the...
Worldbuilding: One Versus One Billion
There are over 7 billion people on Earth. Your story world may have more, it may have fewer, but unless you are writing a creation myth, you're talking very large numbers of people both alive and historical. Though few of them had any idea they were doing it, each was...
Who Is Your Protagonist?
When you write, you're bound to end up with a protagonist or two along the way (it would be a good trick not to!). Understanding your plot and how that protagonist fits into it can shape your story. Some genres and types of story have their own cliches and...
Arguing With the Universe: The Magic of Black Ocean
With the release of the 5th book in the Black Ocean series (Alien Racer), I figured it was a good time to start talking some about the world-building behind the series. Let's talk magic. The Setting With all the trappings of a Star Trek or Firefly universe, it would...
Editing Dialogue: When the Rules Become Suggestions
I have written characters that speak like kings and professors. Perfect diction. Perfect use of vocabulary. Perfect grammar. This is fine for characters who are kings, professors, or anyone else whose education, breeding, and social status demand such...
An Author is a Ventriloquist
'Never let the audience see your lips move.' To a ventriloquist, this seems like obvious advice. But to an author, it can be equally valuable. Part of the conceit of a ventriloquist's act is the belief that the dummy is real. It has a voice of its own, its own...
This is Why We Have Editors
I use commas the way the B29 dropped bombs: let them loose to fall where they may, and hope they land where you want them. I can't spell names I invented. I string together sentences longer than some short stories. This is why we have editors. I overuse ellipses like...