With possibly the most cliched title ever, this post will discuss one of my favorite things about writing–naming characters.
A character’s name can speak volumes about who they are, or it can say nothing. Sometimes the fact that the name says nothing, says everything. But that’s getting too philosophical for a Thursday.
I believe there are two general types of names: ones that someone else made up years and years ago, or ones that you make up. Continue reading
“Well, I was dreaming until you woke me up…”
Dreams are weird.
On second thought, the above three words seem vague. I might as well make statements like, ‘life is weird’ (it is), so let me go into some more detail on the subject of dreams.
I would argue that our concept of fantasy, and our ability to imagine fantastical situations, comes from dreams. It’s an interesting idea–one’s database of sensual information is all that’s needed to create a myriad of bizarre situations. Perhaps that is the only difference between a creative person and someone who is ‘not creative’. The person with the greater imagination is just better able to re-combine their memories while in a lucid state; they don’t have to be unconscious to make stuff up. Continue reading
One of my current WIPs is Marsip, the sequel to the novel Aza that I self-published in 2014 (I’m also working on a dystopian novel called Two Kinds of Darkness).
Marsip is set several years after Aza and hopefully tells the story of how Marsip discovers who he is and what he truly wants. In true fantasy style, these questions happen during a battle for power, waged by the Teransellens–a tribe from the mountains. And let’s not forget Elaine, the stubborn lord’s daughter who unintentionally causes a handful of problems, most of which affect Marsip. Continue reading
Electoad– the electricity producer
Some writers have a specific genre or style that they love to use. For me, it really depends on what I’m writing. I love experimenting– I’m like a crazy artist playing with mediums. But some genres don’t appear to like me. For instance, if it’s modern realism, anything longer than a flash piece sort of… well… morphs into fantasy.
Fantasy ≠ modern realism. Yeah.
I have several theories as to why my unconscious writer-mind appears to be smitten with fantasy: it could be the ability to bring in flying carpets or sea monsters when things ‘go bad’, or maybe it’s the free pass to ignore the laws of physics, but most likely it’s the ability to create my own creatures. Continue reading
Anyone who has ever tried to write a story has been there: We know how to begin, and we know how to end, but… what about the middle?
I am currently struggling with this problem in my re-write of Marsip, the sequel to Aza. I’ve taken the lamest way to deal with the ‘middle problem’, which is to ignore it and work on a different novel*. I would suggest not following my bad example and saving the option of ignoring your story as a last resort.
Because there are many other ways forward. Continue reading
Sonora Hills 