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I love reading books and watching films across genres. I also like seeing how action / violence is portrayed or used in a story to move along plot and develop a character. To me, action and violence should exist within a story for a reason. Don’t get me wrong, sometimes Read more…
Tension & Suspense pair together like Tango & Cash, like cheese & crackers, like peanut butter and chocolate, to help keep a reader reading. In a recent episode of Writer Syndrome, we dove into the differences between the two and how they serve each other to keep momentum in a Read more…
A friend of mine, and early beta reader of HOST, told me in their feedback that it felt a little too much of a coincidence that my main character’s father just so happened to be the one who discovered the signal that kicks off the plot. I said that’s fair, Read more…
You can call this a lazy post. It’s ok. It is. I’m working on a post about the research and writing of an action scene (as I’m in the middle of one right now for my second book). It’s a bit more involved than I expected so I didn’t want Read more…
Some have said naming a character is like naming a kid. Seems extreme to me. If you screw up a kid’s name you don’t have to live with that. I don’t have kids so my characters are more important by default. Kids or no kids, naming characters that you’ll be Read more…
Like the Atari game of the same name (or the reboot SNES title), Act III’s can be like pits in the jungle. One second you’re cruising along vine to vine then it’s down a pit of despair with no return or payoff but to start over. There’s a lot of Read more…
As part of my revisit basics of writing while I pick away at my second novel, I started to explore scene transitions. In early drafts of HOST, scene transitions were not intentional for me. I think some aspects and points I hit naturally, simply from reading books you pick up Read more…
Now that I’m full steam ahead with book two (as of this writing about 30% done), I’m revisiting some basics of writing to; 1) inspire the writing process and 2) keep learning. Recently got into chapter structure and how this can shape a novel. I found there are a few Read more…
I’ve been playing video games for a long time. From Frogger on Atari, to Mario on NES, to TMNT in the arcade, to Last of Us on Playstation. It’s been a long gaming career with no pay or a 401k. Aside from games getting bigger in scope, where you’re simply Read more…
