My views on the craft of writing, and my journey to improve it.
In a lot of science fiction stories, and Reddit posts, people talk about super soldiers. This mostly takes the form of humans genetically engineered for one purpose (Larry Niven’s Saurons) or raised from the cradle to be so, (eg. Imperial Stormtroopers) or turned into cyborgs (Timothy Zahn’s Cobras). Combinations of…
Leave a CommentThe cycle of grieving is pretty much a human constant. It has many shades and variations, of course, but it has cross – cultural applicability. Grief isn’t only about a death. It can be any loss or disruption, which is something that happens a lot in practically every literary genre.…
Leave a Comment“Sure you’ve got enough tools? He shrugged. “Enough tools, enough coffee. Theoretical concepts.“ In the James Bond movies of yore, it took the resources of a major national government to get 007 geared up to a properly cinematic standard. This is the 21st Century, and things have changed since Connery…
Leave a CommentI’ve been doing NaNoWriMo for ten years now, and I’ll be doing it again this November. This is where I break new ground, do something different. That’s good for developing my craft and trying out different genres. This is a look at my process for doing so. I need to…
Leave a CommentThere is a very timeworn piece of advice in writing. “Kill your darlings.” Basically, no matter how neat and cool a passage or scene may be, or the writer thinks it may be, if it doesn’t advance the story, delineate or develop a character, or otherwise serve a useful purpose,…
Leave a CommentOne of the commonest means of building suspense in pretty well any novel in any genre is to have a clock and a deadline. I use that device very freely, and I’ve built some tools to help me use it. Having aliens on another world use Earth’s Gregorian calendar is…
Leave a CommentMost of what I write is set in the near future, which if it is to be plausible requires extrapolating from the present day. Many have done that, and for every hit there have been a lot of misses. Some of the misses are hilarious in retrospect, but they do…
Leave a CommentHow the economy works in a fictional world, large and small scale, has a lot to do with the story. Of course, it doesn’t mean you should commit the cardinal sin of lecturing the reader. The economy is like the floor. No one pays attention to it, but it supports…
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