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Pow, biff, ka-bam! That’s right, it’s time to talk about fight scenes. These are a staple of speculative fiction, and the movies make them look so easy! But anyone who’s ever written one knows that’s not the case, so today we’re discussing tips for making … read more »
Storytellers love character archetypes. They feel ancient and symbolic, and they’re just fun to play with. A while back, we mentioned archetypes we think stories are better without. To banish the rain on our archetype parade, here’s five we want to see more often. Read more »
Making your protagonist a relatable underdog is a great way to encourage your audience to bond with them. Unfortunately, it’s easy for this effort to go wrong. Instead of feeling sympathy for your hero, the audience might think your character is whiny and unpleasant. The narration … read more »
This week, we’re talking about quests, and not the kind where you go out and kill ten boars. These quests are the stuff of legends, of great heroes venturing out to seek a relic of power. Or of a young child taking a gift basket … read more »
Space battles are an important aspect of science fiction, especially space opera, and we want them to be engaging. At first blush, that might sound easy. Space battles have hyperdrives and torpedoes and lasers, oh my. How could that not be engaging? But it’s harder than you … read more »
Writing and roleplaying are vastly different mediums. Writing offers much greater control over the story, but roleplaying has something else: a strong connection with the audience. Whereas writers have limited knowledge of how readers respond to their work, game masters (GMs) must be closely in … read more »
Prologues and epilogues seem so simple. They come before the first chapter and after the last chapter of a book, right? But maybe there’s more to it than that. When is a prologue really chapter one? When is chapter one really a prologue? What is … read more »
A good protagonist is active. They get out and do things to move the plot forward. But making a protagonist active is often more difficult than it sounds. Sometimes you get caught up in the “refuse the call” phase of the hero’s journey and don’t … read more »
We all want to write what we’re passionate about, but sometimes that’s not as simple as it sounds. What happens when an author discovers halfway through a story that they’re more interested in a side character than the protagonist? What’s a writer to do when … read more »
A great reveal can be sublime. Unfortunately, this has storytellers chasing after the perfect reveal even when their story would be better off without it. Reveals have to be set up just right to work, and some information is too critical to be withheld until … read more »