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When does a sequence of scenes not make a story? A good story is driven by causality: incident A causes incident B, either by the laws of physics, or by plausible character actions. In Joe, much of the text is … Continue reading
Yearly Archives: 2016
I bought and read this book prior to attending a seminar led by Mr. Brooks. The workshop was far better than the book. The book can be useful but has extremely low information density. Mainly it is a ranting manifesto … Continue reading
This booklet offers advice to writers about point of view. It defines POV as a “position” from which something is considered or evaluated (p.6). The author eventually explains that this “position” is not a spatial location (e.g., a camera placement … Continue reading
Revenge of the Robots RUR is a play, first produced in 1922, remembered for introducing the word “robot” into the English lexicon. The story is, lifelike robots are manufactured by the millions to be servants and laborers so humans will … Continue reading
A colleague, Skylar Kahn, once met Isaac Asimov and subsequently wrote an interesting rememberance of one his speeches from the 1970’s (www.copperarea.com/pages/isaac-asimov-womans-role/). The theme of population growth concerns me and inhabits my latest sci-fi novel in progress. In his concern … Continue reading
News media are abuzz with stories of how the establishment Republican party is desperate to stop Trump from getting the presidential nomination. Why? Because he’s supposed to be a flawed character, vulgar and duplicitous, intellectually vapid, and ill-suited for the … Continue reading
Phoenix, Arizona is not very coastal but Left Coast Crime held its annual mystery and crime-writing conference there recently. The conference’s definition of “coastal” is anyplace west of the central time zone and that includes PHX (mountain time). Next year … Continue reading
I’ve been reading ancient Greek tragedies by Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides, and other poets, and trying to wrap my head around a culture that celebrated war and glorious death in battle. It was the unquestioned and unquestionable fate of healthy … Continue reading
The first chapter of this novel was brilliant and won me over. A sophisticated city couple retreats to their country cottage in England, where they try to be friendly with the country-bumpkin neighbors who own an estate, and significantly, several … Continue reading
I recently finished the tenth revision of my cop thriller novel. I’ve been working on it for five years. It’s been through a million cuts and folds. The original is no longer even recognizable in it, and I thought I … Continue reading