Whether the colorful backdrop or under the microscope, culture can create fantastic engagement for the audience. Detail the many dishes in a feast and watch me start in the kitchen to form and indulge in those same treats. For the audience a habitable environment is made of interlocking components which can, in appearance, exist on … Continue reading In Depth Fictional Cultures
Tag: Writing Rules
Historical Events as Setting
How to adapt real word events as a setting for your story.
Literary Shorthands
It’s inescapable that we want to charge through the banal parts of a story and get to the good stuff. It’s your job to break out the red pen and condense the bits which drag. But what do you lose when you make it short and sweet? Right now I’m reading some grimdark shlock to … Continue reading Literary Shorthands
Discontinuity and Narrative Errors
Your story should be an understandable sequence of events which taken consecutively will lead into one another with factual consistency. This lets your audience digest the information in a familiar manner which makes logical sense. Without this sinew the audience can’t discern what just happened or if what just happened actually happened or matters. Then … Continue reading Discontinuity and Narrative Errors
Hammer it Home: Repetition and Reinforcement in Stories
I was watching Aladdin with a stomach full of Thanksgiving goodness, light-hearted without the typical wall of criticism that accompanies a writer, and enjoyed the film immensely. If only I could flip that switch without copious saturated fats and the good drink, I’d be a happier human being. What struck me watching the film were … Continue reading Hammer it Home: Repetition and Reinforcement in Stories
Advice and Rules for Technical Prose Or: Writing Advice I Picked Up Reading a Bad Novel
A Demon in Silver by R.S. Ford is, in some grand scope of literature from on high, not the worst book ever written by any stretch; but I laughed my abs stiff reading it. And to the author’s credit (before I savagely bash his work) I am rarely compelled to finish a novel I didn’t … Continue reading Advice and Rules for Technical Prose Or: Writing Advice I Picked Up Reading a Bad Novel
Pavlov’s Reader: How to Train Your Audience to Your Prose.
You’re not the only writer out there (I advise to, most likely a host of, other writers here). You’ve read your own writings along with the writings – as wild and intricate as they come – of many authors. You’re prose is unique, which is good; but then again it’s unique, which is perplexing—especially in … Continue reading Pavlov’s Reader: How to Train Your Audience to Your Prose.
Colin Klawans 