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Article Ballad of a Broken Songbird Chapter 34: What They Could Muster Latest post
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Ballad of a Broken Songbird Chapter 34: What They Could Muster
June 10
Ballad of a Broken Songbird Chapter 33: Going, Going, Gone Latest post
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Ballad of a Broken Songbird Chapter 33: Going, Going, Gone
May 11 Article May 11 When Should Violence Change a Character? The short answer? Always. Too often, violence is used to produce a cheap shock for the audience, but it doesn’t serve the story or allow characters to change. It’s little more than a gimmick, allowing the characters to walk away unscathed and unchanged. For violence to matter, you must consider the way it will affect your plot, your characters, and your pacing. When done well, on-page violence increases the tension of a piece dramatically. Even if it is not a main character who is harmed, showing high-stakes violence alerts the audience that every turn might herald danger. Let’s say your story opens with a mining expedition on an uncolonized asteroid. There is an unexpected cave-in, and two Article April 22 Ballad of a Broken Songbird Chapter 32: A Liar, A Cheat, and a False Knight Locked
Ballad of a Broken Songbird Chapter 32: A Liar, A Cheat, and a False Knight
April 19
Opening sentences are tricky. A good one will have your reader glued to the page, waiting for more. A bad one might have readers setting down the book. What’s the difference? You’ll often hear that a first sentence needs to “be attention-grabbing”, but that advice often leads to wordy, over-the-top openings flailing for the reader's attention. A first sentence works when it introduces pressure. Squeeze your characters right from the start, then watch them squirm. Imagine a story about college-age adults, one of whom is sleeping with her roommate’s boyfriend. You might start that story with a line of d Article April 19 First Sentences Opening sentences are tricky. A good one will have your reader glued to the page, waiting for more. A bad one might have readers setting down the book. What’s the difference? You’ll often hear that a first sentence needs to “be attention-grabbing”, but that advice often leads to wordy, over-the-top openings flailing for the reader's attention. A first sentence works when it introduces pressure. Squeeze your characters right from the start, then watch them squirm. Imagine a story about college-age adults, one of whom is sleeping with her roommate’s boyfriend. You might start that story with a line of dialogue, one which brings the reader into the conspiracy: “We shouldn’t be doing this when C Article April 15 Sympathetic Vs. Likable Characters: Which is Which? Maleficent , Wicked , and Cruella are only a few movies which have attempted to shift audience perspective in favor of a character labeled a villain. They illustrate why these characters made choices originally labeled “bad,” attempting to garner sympathy by exposing the circumstances which led to such fateful outcomes. But often, sympathy isn’t enough. What keeps an audience rooting for someone even when their moral compass points a different direction than ours? What makes a character truly unforgettable? Sympathy and likability are two different things. Sympathy describes what an audience feels when they understand a character’s actions. The audience must trust a character’s internal reas Article April 7 Crafting Characters With Magical Might Whether it’s the wizarding school churning out the kingdom’s best scholars, the space-mancers able to manipulate the fabric of space-time itself, or something entirely different, magic appears in all corners of speculative fiction. These systems range from luck-of-the-draw lotteries all the way to anyone-can-be-special-if-they-try-hard-enough. But magic systems aren’t about the fun gimmicks or the world-ending powers. In good writing, magic serves a higher purpose–not just asking what’s possible, but what it costs to get there, and what the world sees when you do. The first thing any writer has to decide when building a magic system is what the power does within the scope of the world. Does Article April 1 Ballad of a Broken Songbird Chapter 31: All In Your Head Locked
Ballad of a Broken Songbird Chapter 31: All In Your Head
March 27
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Punch a drunk in the face, or insult the queen and turn her army against you? Either choice can carry a story, if the decision costs something. Tension begins the moment a character is faced with loss: choose A and lose B, or choose B and lose A. The higher the stakes, the higher the tension. Physical safety is an easy place to start–what is a greater loss than one’s own life? Action scenes are fun to write, and increase the pacing of a novel, but beware: too many of them and the threat of physical harm starts to dissipate out of the reader’s mind. Ever heard of “plot armor?” It’s the term for when a character survive Article March 27 Tavern Brawls and Court Politics: How to Balance Types of Tension in Fantasy Storytelling Punch a drunk in the face, or insult the queen and turn her army against you? Either choice can carry a story, if the decision costs something. Tension begins the moment a character is faced with loss: choose A and lose B, or choose B and lose A. The higher the stakes, the higher the tension. Physical safety is an easy place to start–what is a greater loss than one’s own life? Action scenes are fun to write, and increase the pacing of a novel, but beware: too many of them and the threat of physical harm starts to dissipate out of the reader’s mind. Ever heard of “plot armor?” It’s the term for when a character survives entirely too long or through impossible circumstances. Stories which bend Article March 24 Ballad of a Broken Songbird Chapter 30: Burn It Down Locked
Ballad of a Broken Songbird Chapter 30: Burn It Down
March 13
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Every fantasy story starts in much the same way: the diplomat, the brute, the jester, the soldier. These roles exist for a reason–stories need them. The trouble begins when characters never move past their job description. Archetypes themselves are not poor writing. The stoic, grizzled fighter appears over and over because he is, very often, a niche that must be filled. However, characters cannot finish the story standing in the same spot they begin. Imagine a solitary wizard who grumbles at the mere thought of people. Left simply at that, he is little more than a cliche. But perhaps a young urchin accompanies the wizard Article March 13 Crafting Characters, Not Archetypes Every fantasy story starts in much the same way: the diplomat, the brute, the jester, the soldier. These roles exist for a reason–stories need them. The trouble begins when characters never move past their job description. Archetypes themselves are not poor writing. The stoic, grizzled fighter appears over and over because he is, very often, a niche that must be filled. However, characters cannot finish the story standing in the same spot they begin. Imagine a solitary wizard who grumbles at the mere thought of people. Left simply at that, he is little more than a cliche. But perhaps a young urchin accompanies the wizard on his quest, and something begins to change. Or a gruff fighting man w Article March 9 Mental Walls and Their Effect on Characters Stuck in the Past Ruminating on a comment made by a boss, staying in a relationship long after it has grown toxic, refusing to give up grieving because the pain is a reminder of what used to be. We see these patterns easily in others, but the harder question is why we repeat them in ourselves. And how, as writers, we create characters who do the same. The first place we look to is tension. In writing, tension is the currency between author and reader. It’s the promise of suspense, the guarantee that if the reader keeps going, they will watch the characters struggle, change, adapt, and impact their story in significant ways. We, as authors, can achieve tension in many forms: a hero can dangle over the side of Article March 2 
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