Movie Review: Curse of the Undead, 1959

4.5 out of 5 stars; some bits of dialogue are melodramatic by today’s standards. But overall the plot is well-paced, the characters are great, the supernatural elements blend well with the western setting,

Writing Neurodiversity: Bipolar and Not Loving It, Part 2

The manic phase is daunting to portray, in part because a person may have a very slow burn from normal to manic,

Writing Neurodiversity: Bipolar and Not Loving It, Part 1

Also known as manic-depressive disorder, bipolar disorder is a spectrum of chemical disaster in the brain, and an illness Hollywood tends to portray badly, if at all.

Writing with Emotional Connection: Starting Slow

Sometimes you want to write a story that’s all action and adventure, your reader pulled happily from one feat of derring-do and Evil Overlord deathtrap escape to the next. In media res is perfect for that. But what if your focus is more on the world and the people who make their lives in it, for better or worse?

Worldbuilding: Walking the Manticore

If your world is odd, it should have odd jobs. Manticore-walking. Dragon-washes. Demonic contract editors.

…Wait, those might be regular lawyers.

On Writing: POV For Effect

To quote a certain animated movie, the difference between a villain and a supervillain is-

PRESENTATION!

Ahem. As in, how you present a scene, and especially whose point of view the scene uses, makes a big difference in how the reader sees it.

Worldbuilding: Meeting Characters vs. Meeting Worlds Part 2

Generally speaking, your readers will have fewer preconceptions about your characters than they will about your world. When it comes to a world, a reader will assume it’s like the Earth they know, unless it’s explicitly described otherwise.

Worldbuilding: Meeting Characters vs. Meeting Worlds Part 1

In any story, you have to introduce your readers to two things: the characters, and the world.

Worldbuilding: Giving Monsters a Modern Twist, Part 2

If I were going to create a monster, I’d dig for train tracks.

That probably gave you an urban image. Or an Old West one. Nope. The tracks I’m thinking of were in the Northeast, long-abandoned,

Worldbuilding: Giving Monsters a Modern Twist, Part 1

If you get a chance to check out Matthew Meyer’s three books on youkai (The Night Parade of One Hundred Demons, The Hour of Meeting Evil Spirits, and most recently The Book of the Hakutaku), do it. Not just for the wide variety of monsters. Although any book that has a youkai that specifically sets people’s raincoats on fire