Category: Writing

Let's Talk Comedy

To keep my spirits up during one of the most unusual and patience-testing transitional periods in my life, I’ve been checking out more comedy. Before my move, I hadn’t watched much It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia, or any Arrested Development or Brooklyn Nine-Nine. Between those shows, and keeping up with The Daily Show, Colbert Reportm,… Continue reading Let's Talk Comedy

Where's My Momentum?

As much as old habits die hard, when you’re out of practice it can be very difficult to find your groove again. I just finished my first workout in I-don’t-know-how-long, and all of my joints popped over the course of it. Like, all of them. I even had to stop squatting since my right knee… Continue reading Where's My Momentum?

Concerning Clearly Communicating Characters

With the exception of nature documentaries, or very oddly esoteric works, narrative entertainment is driven by characters. Characters, more often than not, communicate with one another through dialog. Time and time again, especially in films, we see this dialog become murky, bogged down, or unnecessarily obtuse. Unless it is completely essential to your plot, or… Continue reading Concerning Clearly Communicating Characters

From the Vault: The Limitless Genre

With the smashing success of Guardians of the Galaxy, let’s take another look at what can be done within sci-fi. If you step away from science fiction, you may see a tendency among its writers and creators to divide it up into different sub-genres. Time travel is practically its own sort of story, as is… Continue reading From the Vault: The Limitless Genre

Bring Out Your Dead

Writers are murderers. This is an established fact. But I would contend that only bad writers kill characters on a whim, “just because”. If you look at good writing, a character death is never accidental, never flippant. It’s a calculated move. And, if you’re attached to said character or characters, after the initial shock, if… Continue reading Bring Out Your Dead

The Lived-In Universe

For a long time, space travel in fiction was predominantly shiny. Long, slender, cigar-shaped rockets predominantly made of chrome blasted off towards the stars. More often than not, equally shiny flying saucers spun their way towards our suburban homes to shower our Sunday barbecues with death rays. I am exaggerating a bit, but what I’m… Continue reading The Lived-In Universe

Connect Your Characters

Good fiction, when you get down to it, is about people. I don’t just mean the characters. It’s true that, no matter how original or fascinating your premise, you need to have three-dimensional characters. If your characters are flat or uninteresting, or exists solely as ciphers for your own expectations or those of the reader,… Continue reading Connect Your Characters

Blood from Sisyphus

Courtesy Floating Robes Lately, that feeling has come back. Every time I get that heavy, bulky, stinking boulder up to the top of the hill, it rolls back down on top of me. I think I’m overdue for a vacation. My family reunion starts tomorrow (and I will have posts ready, I swear!), so that… Continue reading Blood from Sisyphus