(Disclaimer: Some minor spoilers ahead.) Brian's Style Promise of Blood isn't the first novel I've read by Brian McClellan. That honour goes to Sins of Empire, which holds a special place in my heart as both the first flintlock fantasy I've read, as well as the first title I purchased because of a recommendation read... Continue Reading →
Beginning a D&D campaign is a daunting experience, especially when your entire experience role-playing is in a few Pathfinder games. Dungeons&Dragons' latest edition is by no means an overly complex game. Most of the rules are explained in a clear, forthright way, and both the Player's Handbook(PHB) and Dungeon Master's Guide(DMG) are excellent books, introducing... Continue Reading →
Oh, look! I'm going to talk about talking about games! Bit redundant, if you ask me, but I ain't the one who decides what goes up on the blog, am I? What do you mean I am? I-I am? Welp. There goes that excuse. Anyway, I'm hard at work at a video review for Before... Continue Reading →
Diary Entry #220 Catch up to what's happening with the Unintentionally Helpful Villain by checking out The Unintentionally Helpful Villain #15! Sven, mine Prime Librarian, is a self-made man! I know that to be true, for I saw him rise from the dirt and mud and turn most humanoid. How he hath accomplished such a... Continue Reading →
There are many ways to start the writing process. Some writers prefer to do it by breaking the story in its seven primary steps--to be explored in Chapter 3. Most begin with the shortest expression of the story as a whole, the premise line. The premise is your story stated in one sentence. As soon... Continue Reading →
I've been thinking about today's blog post--quite a bit, in fact. I decided that instead of offering you some of my own hard-earned wisdom(insane laughter), I would take you on my exploration of John Truby's well-regarded, well-known book, "The Anatomy of Story."Â The plan is simple: Make a post about each chapter (sometimes the posts... Continue Reading →
Early on, when I first started sharing my writing, a number of people gave me the following advice: Show, don't tell. That's good advice, I thought; it helped me in identifying a particular weakness my writing had at the time. The more I thought about it, the more I realised that this particular piece of... Continue Reading →
How do we create memorable characters? Well, you'd need a dozen eggs, a bit of vanilla and seventeen cups of sugar to make your average Mary Sue; or you could whip yourself good old-fashioned one-dimensional characters by doing the same thing you'd do to get stale bread -- don't spend any time cooking them up... Continue Reading →
Diary Entry #0190 Mine powers of tracking have proven useless in the quest to discover where Amara, mine treacherous, body-snatching former wife, has ran off to. I will not give up, however. She cannot hide for long. Diary Entry #0191 I came across an apple merchant today. Apples, he told me, blessed by the gauntleted hand of the... Continue Reading →
World-building is a tricky subject. Too much of it, and it ends up clogging the story. Too little, and the setting ends up feeling too far removed from reality. There are many different aspects of world-building we can touch upon, but the most important thing you have to remember is... If you like it and it's... Continue Reading →
The Grimoire Reliquary 