A recent article in the April 29 edition of the New York Review of Books, "Editing Humanity's Future" by Natalie de Souza, awoke in me a very insistent interest in the topic of bioetics. Rather than begin with any of the books reviewed in de Souza's article, I took an interest in a considerably lighter... 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 →
Most writers come at character all wrong. They start by listing all the traits of the hero, tell a story about him and then somehow make him change at the end. That won't work. The steps we're gonna work through are the following: We look not just at our MC but at all characters together,... 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 →
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 →
Bullets! Forty years I have watched as military arts evolved, changing the balance between  all those different peoples who move in and out of the Barrowlands, bringing with them an ever-more complex array of ranged weaponry. These...guns, as they are called, are fascinating contraptions; I have seen a squadron of ill-prepared mages ripped apart under a single round of... Continue Reading →
One thing I set out to do with this blog--that I have yet to do--is write a series of long-form essays about topics that intrigue me. Perhaps I've done a bit of that with my 'Saturday Night Gaming' series, but I've decided that now would be a good time to take a long look at what... Continue Reading →
The Grimoire Reliquary 