Category Archives: Writing

The Story of a Sword

Posted on by Henry

I had an idea a while back, something that came to me while I was lying in bed at night. It’s an unfortunately productive time for my imagination, when I’d like to sleep but instead often come up with story ideas. Then I struggle to record them and whatever resonance they hold for me before they slip away, and when I wake in the morning and stare at whatever I’ve written down I have to wonder why I thought it was a good idea.

Wait, no, I’m mixing this idea up with many others that I have. *This* one came to me while I was supposed to be listening to a presentation. I promptly jotted it down on my phone and emailed it to myself. Anyway, I’ve elaborated on what I think the opening of the story is and I’ll share that opening scene with you today. Maybe it’s good, maybe it’s not, it’ll probably change… but first you’ll have a chance to enjoy it.

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Still Busy: Have A Paper On Lloyd Alexander and Characters’ Emotional Growth

Posted on by Henry

I don’t know if you want to read about how Lloyd Alexander constructed emotional transformation for his characters, but I wrote a paper fanboying about it last fall. I don’t want to fall out of the habit of posting something, even if I’m too busy to write a new post, so I’ll share that paper with you instead. I’m not sure how well the formatting has survived the transition. It looks legible from where I sit. Cross the vast gap of this break to enjoy it.

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Why David Weber, Why?

Posted on by Henry

Reading about flat characters in E.M. Forster’s Aspects of the Novel, I have just been reminded of one of the things that routinely frustrates me in David Weber’s work.  Weber likes trying to make characters who should essentially be flat, more or less caricatures intended to draw up conflict or drama or comedy (or maybe they should be comic but he refuses to use them in that way, making them painfully comic instead… more on that later).  But instead of accepting that these characters should be flat, he tries to flesh them out.  He tries to make them round, and make me care about them.  Nine times out of ten, he fails.

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Code Name Verity, by Elizabeth Wein

Posted on by Henry

There are a number of covers I’ve seen for this book, and while they all ostensibly represent the book, the one above is the only one I saw in person that feels appropriate.  It’s a very good book, definitely worth reading, and more than a little dark.  Here’s the other one I’ve seen in print for a spot of comparison:

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Flash Fiction Challenge: Attack of the Titles

Posted on by Henry

I have been driving around with my brothers today, on our way to visit our mother for a big party / art show of hers.  To make up for my delayed post, I’ve overdone Chuck Wendig’s “come up with a title” challenge for this week; instead of giving you only one title, I’ll give you, um, fourteen.  Or maybe sixteen, though I suppose at least four of them are either variations or jokes of some sort.  Oddly enough, I found it far easier to write too many titles than to write just one.  As long as I thought I only had to write one, I felt kind of stuck.  Once I knew I was writing “lots,” I felt free to write whatever the hell came to mind.  It worked pretty well, I think.  Go past the break to read my list.  Quality not guaranteed.

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World Building: Where Have All The Dwarves Gone?

Posted on by Henry

Today’s post is brought to you by the caffeinated musings which have distracted me from my homework and encouraged me to write world background material instead.

The setting of For The King! is largely lacking playable non-humans at the moment.  There are a few dwarves or elves who might be somewhere in the realm of Duval, and there are some gnomes and halflings and others scattered around, but most people, in most places, are human.  The orcs and half-orcs mostly live to the northwest of the kingdom, generally part of the large nomadic tribes which roam through those sections of the Trade Lands.  Heck there are centaurs too, but they generally stick to the lands northeast of the kingdom of Duval, and don’t have much direct contact except with traders who venture out onto the northern plains.

And yet there are remnants of dwarven architecture throughout the center of the kingdom of Duval, and historical records definitely suggest that they used to live in the area.  So… where have all the dwarves gone?

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The Golden Princess, by S.M. Stirling

Posted on by Henry

It’s been a while since I read any S.M. Stirling, and I picked this one up more on a whim than anything else.  I’d gotten tired of the most recent spate of Change novels, probably because of a disconnect between my expectations and what Stirling was delivering.  I wanted Stirling to write an active story about a smaller group of characters, with palpable progress in the plot achieved in the course of each book.  Stirling did create that progress but it was far slower than I’d hoped for, and he spent more time focused on the milieu of the story rather than advancing the story that I wanted to see resolved.  In fact, after the first trilogy the pace of progress slowed precipitously, until it was almost a crawl.

The Golden Princess doesn’t change that pattern.  What did change was my expectations of what I’d find in reading the book.  And I have to say: reading these books as milieu fiction, as much about the world in which they take place as they are about any of the characters, is far more fun and rewarding than reading them with expectations of tight and fast plot.  Definitely worth starting up the series again.

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My Not-Exactly-Tintin Project Might Really Happen?

Posted on by Henry

This update is totally last minute, born of a recognition that I forgot to make my usual post today.  In fact, by my clock, I’m already four minutes too late.  I did spend a goodly portion of my day traveling, but… yeah.

Fortunately, I have some awesome news to share.  Do you remember the time that I mentioned wanting to write a Tintin flowchart (way back in January)?  I just shared the underlying aim, of writing a new era’s Tintin comics, with one of my friends.  They responded by spending fifteen minutes drawing a picture of female Tintin with Snowy, striding along in her trench coat.  It looked really good.  They were really excited and want to talk with me about this project.  So now I’m really excited too.  Hell, I just busted out a big goofy smile for no particular reason.  No, not true, it’s for a very particular reason; this project is something that someone else wants to work on with me!

I’m not writing this to tell you that you should expect something soon.  I’m writing this to tell you that some day, maybe a few years from now, I’ll have another post to tell you about how awesome this thing I’m working on is, and how anxious I am about making it worth your time.  But I think that maybe, just maybe, I’ll be telling you that because I have some good old Tintin-esque glorious adventure for you to feast your eyes on.  I’m really excited about this.

Flash Non-Fiction: Why I Write

Posted on by Henry

This week’s challenge from Chuck Wendig isn’t about fiction at all!  This week, he asked people to write 1000 words about why they write.  I took about that many words to think it through.  Some of my answer feels final, some of it doesn’t, and I’m sure there’s more to be said.  But my response begins below…

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Why do I write?

That question makes me uneasy.  I don’t feel like I have a good answer to it, or maybe it’s that the answer I do have isn’t “good.” Part of the answer is very simple:

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Flash Fiction: Her Maritime Scowl

Posted on by Henry

Gale-Force-Winds

This is a bit late, but this week’s (last week’s?) flash fiction from Terribleminds involved using a randomly generated phrase.  I got “maritime scowl.”  This is what followed…

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