10 Writing "Rules" We Wish More Science Fiction and Fantasy Authors Would Break Kinja is in read-only mode. We are working to restore service. I give a hearty Here Here for #4! There is nothing wrong with telling a story that fits within the covers of a single book. Remember, the whole Trilogy+ got started when the publisher got fed up with the fact Tolkien wouldn't finish. The moment I see something like "Book One of the (insert name of place or magic item and latin number)ogy", I want to put the book down. Flagged How to Write a Credible Fantasy Story (with Examples) Add New Question How can I make beings like elves and dwarfs more believable? wikiHow Contributor Give them a culture and a history. They will be either as natural to your world as humans are, or they split off of humanity due to natural disaster and were forced to evolve. For example: in a post atomic war setting, dwarves might be humans who evolved shorter because they lived underground for so long. How do I start an introduction to a story? Ask a Question If this question (or a similar one) is answered twice in this section, please click here to let us know.
The Difference Engine The Difference Engine is an alternate history novel by William Gibson and Bruce Sterling. It is widely regarded as one of the first "true" steampunk books written in the late 20th century. It posits a Victorian Britain in which great technological and social change has occurred after entrepreneurial inventor Charles Babbage succeeded in his ambition to build a mechanical computer (actually his analytical engine rather than the difference engine). The novel was nominated for the British Science Fiction Award in 1990, the Nebula Award for Best Novel in 1991, and both the John W. Campbell Memorial Award and the Prix Aurora Award in 1992. Setting[edit] In the novel, the British Empire is more powerful than in reality, thanks to the development and use of extremely advanced steam-driven technology in industry. Plot summary[edit] During the story, many characters come to believe that the punch cards are a gambling "modus", a programme that would allow the user to place consistently winning bets.
66 Facts You May Not Have Known About The English Language | Paul Anthony Jones The English language is, quite literally, the greatest language in the world. Great in terms of size - the current edition of the Oxford English Dictionary contains 615,000 entries. Great in terms of scope — it’s an official language in seventy-nine countries and territories. And great in terms of, well, greatness — it’s just one fantastic mishmash of borrowings, inventions, corruptions, misinterpretations, misspellings, alterations, words you’ll never need, and words you never even knew you’ll never need. Since December 2013, @HaggardHawks has been trying to prove precisely this by tweeting odd words, word origins and language facts everyday. 1,300 tweets later, it turns six months old this week and so to celebrate, here are 66 random facts from our first semester that hopefully go some way towards showing how great — and how downright bizarre — the English language can be. 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26. 27. 28. 29. 31.
Antonin Artaud Antoine Marie Joseph Artaud, better known as Antonin Artaud (French: [aʁto]; 4 September 1896 – 4 March 1948), was a French playwright, poet, actor, essayist, and theatre director.[1] §Early life[edit] Antoine Artaud was born 4 September 1896 in Marseille, France, to Euphrasie Nalpas and Antoine-Roi Artaud.[2] Both his parents were natives of Smyrna (modern-day İzmir), and he was greatly affected by his Greek ancestry.[2] His mother gave birth to nine children, but only Antonin and one sister survived infancy. Artaud's parents arranged a long series of sanatorium stays for their temperamental son, which were both prolonged and expensive. §Paris[edit] In March 1920, Artaud moved to Paris to pursue a career as a writer, and instead discovered he had a talent for avant-garde theatre. In 1926-28, Artaud ran the Alfred Jarry Theatre, along with Roger Vitrac. In 1931, Artaud saw Balinese dance performed at the Paris Colonial Exposition. §Final years[edit] §Theatre of cruelty[edit]
Rainer Maria Rilke René Karl Wilhelm Johann Josef Maria Rilke (4 December 1875 – 29 December 1926) — better known as Rainer Maria Rilke (German: [ˈʁaɪnɐ maˈʁiːa ˈʁɪlkə]) — was a Bohemian-Austrian poet and novelist, "widely recognized as one of the most lyrically intense German-language poets",[1] writing in both verse and highly lyrical prose. Several critics have described Rilke's work as inherently "mystical".[2][3] His writings include one novel, several collections of poetry, and several volumes of correspondence in which he invokes haunting images that focus on the difficulty of communion with the ineffable in an age of disbelief, solitude, and profound anxiety. These deeply existential themes tend to position him as a transitional figure between the traditional and the modernist writers. Biography[edit] Early life (1875–1896)[edit] Rilke, three years old, circa 1878–1879 Munich and Saint Petersburg[edit] In 1898, Rilke undertook a journey lasting several weeks to Italy. Paris (1902–1910)[edit]
Famous Advice on Writing: The Collected Wisdom of Great Writers By Maria Popova By popular demand, I’ve put together a periodically updated reading list of all the famous advice on writing presented here over the years, featuring words of wisdom from such masters of the craft as Kurt Vonnegut, Susan Sontag, Henry Miller, Stephen King, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Susan Orlean, Ernest Hemingway, Zadie Smith, and more. Please enjoy. Jennifer Egan on Writing, the Trap of Approval, and the Most Important Discipline for Aspiring Writers “You can only write regularly if you’re willing to write badly… Accept bad writing as a way of priming the pump, a warm-up exercise that allows you to write well.”
Why Pulitizer Prize-Winner Donna Tartt Is My Role Model Tartt's author photo=the coolest. I wanted to throw a parade when I found out that Donna Tartt won this year’s Pulitzer Prize for fiction for her novel The Goldfinch. I know parades are usually only for, like, Thanksgiving and the Fourth of July, but if we were going to organize a national holiday around a living author, I’d vote for Tartt. I’ve been the biggest fan of Tartt’s ever since I ferociously ate her first novel, The Secret History. She’s a big-time role model of mine and in honor of her winning the fanciest and most important American literary prize you can win, I think it’s time to talk about why she should be a role model for us all. 1.) 2.) 3.) 4.) 5.)
James O'Barr James O'Barr (born January 1, 1960) is an American graphic artist, best known as the creator of the comic book series The Crow.[1] Personal life[edit] O'Barr, an orphan, was raised in the foster care system.[2] He studied Renaissance sculpture, live models and photographic still lifes. In the 1990s O'Barr was affiliated with the experimental metal band Trust Obey, which was signed briefly to Trent Reznor's Nothing label before the band was dropped. Trust Obey released the album Fear and Bullets: Music to Accompany The Crow in 1993. As of the mid-2000s, O'Barr resides in Dallas with his daughter.[3] The Crow[edit] O'Barr's own hope that his project would result in a personal catharsis went unfulfilled, he told an interviewer in 1994, saying, "[A]s I drew each page, it made me more self-destructive, if anything....There is pure anger on each page".[6] The Crow has sold more than 750,000 copies worldwide.[7] Acclaim[edit] Sundown[edit] Frame 137[edit] Bibliography[edit] References[edit]
Alan Moore Alan Moore (born 18 November 1953) is an English writer primarily known for his work in comic books including Watchmen, V for Vendetta, and From Hell.[1] Frequently described as the best graphic novel writer in history,[2][3] he has been called "one of the most important British writers of the last fifty years".[4] He has occasionally used such pseudonyms as Curt Vile, Jill de Ray, Translucia Baboon and The Original Writer. Moore is an occultist, ceremonial magician,[6] and anarchist,[7] and has featured such themes in works including Promethea, From Hell, and V for Vendetta, as well as performing avant-garde spoken word occult "workings" with The Moon and Serpent Grand Egyptian Theatre of Marvels, some of which have been released on CD. Early life[edit] "LSD was an incredible experience. Not that I'm recommending it for anybody else; but for me it kind of – it hammered home to me that reality was not a fixed thing. Alan Moore (2003)[2](pp19–20) Career[edit] Early career: 1978–1980[edit]
M. John Harrison Early years[edit] Harrison was born in Rugby, Warwickshire in 1945 to an engineering family.[1] His father died when he was a teenager and he found himself "bored, alienated, resentful and entrapped", playing truant from Dunsmore School (now Ashlawn School).[1] An English teacher introduced him to George Bernard Shaw and he was immediately "hooked on polemic".[1] He left school in 1963 at age 18; he worked at various times as a groom (Atherstone Hunt), a student teacher (1963–65), and a clerk for the Royal Masonic Charity Institute, London (1966). His hobbies included dwarfs, electric guitars and writing pastiches of H. H. Munro.[2] His early interest in dwarfs continued through various of his novels, via characters such as Arm the Dwarf in The Committed Men, Choplogic the dwarf in the Viriconium series, and so on. The New Wave science fiction movement[edit] The 1970s[edit] Harrison's first novel of the Viriconium sequence (see below), The Pastel City also appeared in 1971. The 1980s[edit]
Alasdair Gray Gray's works combine elements of realism, fantasy, and science fiction, plus clever use of typography and his own illustrations. He has also written on politics, in support of socialism and Scottish independence, and on the history of English literature. He has been described by author Will Self as "a creative polymath with an integrated politico-philosophic vision",[5] and as "a great writer, perhaps the greatest living in this archipelago today"[6] and by himself as "a fat, spectacled, balding, increasingly old Glasgow pedestrian".[7] Life[edit] Book cover designed and illustrated by Alasdair Gray. Gray was born in Riddrie, east Glasgow. Gray illustrates his books himself, and has produced many murals as well as paintings. He has been married twice: firstly to Inge Sorenson (1961–1970), and since 1991 to Morag McAlpine. He produced the ceiling mural for The Auditorium of the Oran Mor on Byres Road in Glasgow, one of the largest works of art in Scotland. [1] Quotes[edit] "That's suicide!"
Developing a Solid Third Person Point of View | Ellen Brock Point of view is one of the biggest issues I see in my client’s manuscripts. Writers working in first person tend to do pretty well, but those writing in third person tend to have a problem – they blend third person limited with omniscient. Now last week I went over the differences between head hopping and omniscient POV, but today I want to look at how writers can blend third limited and omniscient without even realizing it. This blending can keep your work stuck at an amateur level and could be a red flag for agents and editors. Let’s start by looking at an example: Jane couldn’t take it anymore. So this excerpt blends omniscient and third person limited pretty badly. Here’s the same passage again with the third person limited in blue, omniscient in orange, and neutral lines in black: There is a lot of jumping in this passage between third limited and omniscient. So how can you fix it? If you want to write in omniscient: If you want to write in third limited: Like this: Like Loading...
Les Fleurs du mal The first edition of Les Fleurs du mal with author's notes. Overview[edit] The initial publication of the book was arranged in six thematically segregated sections: The foreword to the volume, identifying Satan with the pseudonymous alchemist Hermes Trismegistus and calling boredom the worst of miseries, neatly sets the general tone of what is to follow: Si le viol, le poison, le poignard, l'incendie,N'ont pas encore brodé de leurs plaisants dessinsLe canevas banal de nos piteux destins,C'est que notre âme, hélas! n'est pas assez hardie. If rape and poison, dagger and burning, Have still not embroidered their pleasant designs On the banal canvas of our pitiable destinies, It's because our souls, alas, are not bold enough! The preface concludes with the following malediction: C'est l'Ennui! It's Ennui! He dreams of the gallows in the haze of his hookah. You know him, reader, this delicate monster, Hypocritical reader, my likeness, my brother! Tableaux Parisiens (Parisian Scenes)[edit] Legacy[edit]