Iceberg style of worldbuilding

Last night I was having a discussion with Chris H. about a critique that I had received Read the rest of this entry »

I’ve finished up my final (major) edit pass of “Death Rides for Free” and am busily putting the edits in to the doc. I normally do my edits on a hard copy so as to compartmentalize my working environments. I use the word processor primarily for the “barf” phase, then edit on hard copy in the “polish” phase in order to avoid the temptation to edit / wordsmith during the barf phase. After a slash-and-burn rampage with the red pen (which is misleading, as I tend to write bare-bones and then augment and add far more than I remove during an edit pass) I type it all in.

We are almost to the end of the critiques from the Turkey City Lexicon. The second to last set of critiques is characters and viewpoint. Read the rest of this entry »

The next set of critiques from the Turkey City Lexicon is background. Read the rest of this entry »

The next set of critiques from the Turkey City Lexicon is plots. Read the rest of this entry »

The next set of critiques from the Turkey City Lexicon is common workshop story types. Read the rest of this entry »

The next set of critiques from the Turkey City Lexicon is for paragraph and sentence structure. Read the rest of this entry »

The next portion of the SF critique lexicon that I’ve pulled out deals with writing dialogue. Read the rest of this entry »

Recently I have been putting together a writer’s glossary and as part of this I have (re-)examining the SF critique lexicon that put together last year. Read the rest of this entry »

Yesterday evening I had the second reading of “The Alchemist of Liberty” at the writers’ group that I frequent. It went over a bit better than the first part (see my rant from last week), which is not too surprising given its more intense action sequences and introduction of a plethora of new terms (which I have been working on cleaning up). The main critique was to more on the characters and not be so relentless in my introduction of new things, which is, of course, a good suggestion as compelling characterization will usually pull you through the rough spots.

One interesting suggestion to come out of yesterday’s reading was that I should try writing it up as a movie script and sell it to Hollywood as the SFX wizards could do better justice to its visuals. This is not the first time that I have been told, in not so many words, that my writing has a cinematic quality to it. On the other hand, I can’t help but think this is polite way of saying that I should give up on trying to describe complex and/or exotic situations and events. I will politely ignore that, if it is the actual intent of the comment, and continue on trying to describe said exotic complexities.

This does bring to mind one fond wish of mine, which is to have Matt Howarth illustrate a graphic novel based one of my stories. How is that for pie in the sky?

This morning I decided that what I really want now is to find (or establish) a writers’ group that is focused on genre fiction, specifically SF, but I would also like to include fantasy, horror and mystery as well. Read the rest of this entry »

This morning I posted on my wiki an essay on critiquing that I started a few months ago (contents below the fold). As with all wiki articles, it is a work in progress.

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