What you must learn is that these rules are no different than the rules of a computer system. Some of them can be bent. Others can be broken. Understand?
NON HIC EST ‘NAM! SUNT PRAECEPTA!
Advancing Story Through Combat
Or: You do not truly know a man until you fight him.
Cool Story, Bro
B-b-b-b-bonus post!More wisdom from the notorious TJIC on his early writing false starts:I always thought that once I had a premise (a guy who punches and fuses atoms; an anti-gravity drive; etc.) I had a story,but no,the STORY comes when you have a character and a conflict.- Travis Corcoran, @MorlockP on TwitterWhen he said this,…
“I had thought of putting: and he lived happily ever afterwards to the end of his days.”
It is a good ending, and none the worse for having been used before. Now I shall have to alter that: it does not look like coming true. - J.R.R. Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring Alright, I can't promise that this will be my last Game of Thrones inspired blog post, but I can…
Apocalypse How?
Charlie don't wrench? When someone says "I liked the story, but I wish the hero didn't have to struggle so much; I wanted it to be a wish fulfillment cakewalk," they're just insulting themselves. - Prometheus award winning author Travis J. I. Corcoran, @MorlockP on Twitter This problem can occur in any sci-fi, but it…
Flawed Characters and Heroism
Imperfect heroes aren't just ok, they're the most interesting ones. I may have been a little hard on Grimdark. Sure, sure, we're all tired of Dark and Gritty Realistic worlds where everything sucks. But Grimdark did get one thing right: heroes aren't perfect. Cyberpunk frequently acknowledges this as well; sometimes criminals and misanthropes are the…
Grim, Dark, and Epic Blog Post of Epic Grimdarkness
In which I make the obligatory halfhearted defense of Grimdark in theory, but admit that in practice it is almost universally self-important teenage nihilist tedium. In the Grim Darkness of cable television, there is only gritty "realism," and as a representative of Generation X, I have to admit that this is mostly our fault. Our…
Religion in Fiction
Or: Why a Russian Space Pope can Speak Ex Cathedra from the Moon in Hard Sci-Fi. An alien learning about our culture exclusively from a library science fiction section could be forgiven for being almost entirely ignorant of religion. Golden age, new wave, and cyberpunk generally (when they mention it at all) either treat religion…
Music for the End of the World – My My, Hey Hey (Out of the Blue)
First, a brief update. After a consult with my IP guy, it may be prohibitively expensive for me to include song lyrics in each chapter heading. Some artists are cool with that kind of use, others want obscene royalties considering I'm an indie author sitting on $0 in total lifetime sales. Anyway, on to my…
The Conservative Case for Diversity in Fictional Characters
Ha ha, April Fools. I'm serious. Ok, only if we redefine our key word: "diversity." I don't mean "you must include sufficient numbers of characters of each national origin and weird sexual fetish." What kind of person would do something that trite and boring? However, our characters shouldn't all be alike. How they think, speak,…
