Category Archives: Writing

Henry Bit Off More Than He Could Chew

Posted on by Henry

I know I have a big mouth, but apparently I tried to fit too many words in it this time.  Sorry.  Normally I’d have a piece of flash fiction for you right now (and I have started it), but instead, here’s the beginning of a nonsense sonnet I’m in the process of writing.

The King begged the peasant, “Please sir won’t you
Deign to grace my table with thy good name?”
“I could not,” he replied, “give credence to
Your reign.  I think not, if it’s all the same.”

I’ll have more for you on Friday. Really.

Last Days of Loneliness: Revisions

Posted on by Henry

Hey folks.  No flash fiction for you at the moment, just another piece of story from Last Days of Loneliness, the YA horror novel that I’ve been working on for a while.  Here’s the most recent piece I posted.  I think I’ve rewritten this scene about five times now, but this opening for it just came to me while I was lying in bed last night, so I had to give it a try.  Enjoy!

Continue reading →

Meta-flash fiction?

Posted on by Henry

This week, Chuck Wendig wants fuel for his flash fiction fires.  It just so happens that I’d already been thinking of ways to use my foray into random D&D material for the purposes of flash fiction, so I came to this topic with an idea more-or-less prepared.  Some modification may be necessary.

Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to use this Random Adventure Generator to create your prompt.  You may use as much of it as you like, but you must at least use the Theme, the Story Hook, and the Climax.  Write your story in 2000 words or less.

Also, I should mention: I’m going to be incommunicado for the rest of the week, and will thus miss my normal second post!  It’s time for me to live in a tent and do larp-camp staff training again.  If you’re anywhere near upstate New York, you should consider sending your children or your friends’ children to The Wayfinder Experience.  It’s good stuff.

Would Watch Again: Fury Road

Posted on by Henry

Mad-Max-Fury-Road-Banner-Charlize-Theron-Tom-Hardy

This movie is awesome.  It is awe-inspiring.  It is, very literally, spectacular.

If you like action movies, or you like the post-apocalyptic aesthetic, this movie is for you.  If you normally turn up your nose at action movies because they are laden with troubling bullshit, you can still try this movie.  Not because there aren’t troubling themes dealing with sex slavery and the subjugation of women, but because these things are dealt with well, with considerable respect and aplomb, in a movie that treats its female characters as real and very impressive people even when some of the movie’s characters do not.  Fury Road may or may not be a feminist movie (more on that later) but I think it’s a movie that you can watch without feeling like someone snuck you a shit sandwich.

Plus, it’s a really well made action movie, period.  I saw it on Saturday and would happily see it again RIGHT NOW.  It isn’t the tightly-plotted / intricately arranged tapestry of Die Hard; it’s like a formidable piece of Brutalist architecture.  It dominates the landscape with its physicality, its constant tension, and the relentless pace of its driving (heh) narrative.  For more of my thoughts on the matter, read on.

Continue reading →

World Building: Making The Outer Planes Better

Posted on by Henry

500px-Outer_planes

Once again, I find myself investigating the cosmological background of the setting I’ve most recently created.  I was reading through the Dungeon Master’s Guide again, reading the section on planes near the beginning, and I’m in that usual place: somewhere between excited and miffed.  Fortunately, it’s easy enough to change the things that haven’t excited me.

I’m comfortable, for the most part, with the material the DMG offers on things like the Astral and Ethereal planes.  I’m more okay with the DMG’s ideas for the Shadowfell, the Feywild, and the various elemental planes.  I’m not very happy about their ideas for the Outer Planes.  I have some rewriting to do; let me tell you why.

Continue reading →

Last Days of Loneliness: Crucial Exposition

Posted on by Henry

I’ve solved some of my problems in Last Days of Loneliness, I think.  If you read my earlier posts about how things were terrible and how I couldn’t figure out why Amanda knows to kill the eggs with fire, rest assured, I’ve stumbled across an excellent workaround.

I had very similar conversations with Ben and my brother Nate about how to solve my narrator’s knowledge problem, in which they basically said that I should make someone else in the town or cult tell her to use fire to kill the eggs.  I, of course, resisted their advice at first.  I’d had similar thoughts many times previously, and always dismissed them because I thought it made no sense for someone to break the cult’s taboos and try to warn Amanda.  But after talking with both Nate and Ben, who both made it sound so plausible, and then reading some of George Buckenham’s rules for making games on Rock Paper Shotgun, I decided what the hell; I’d go ahead and do as Buckenham suggested.  So I tried the stupid/simple solution.  And I liked it.

Go figure.

What follows is the scene that I thought wouldn’t work, but did.  It comes some time after a scene in which Amanda goes to the police station and overhears an interesting conversation, and long before her ultimate recognition of the information that she is given in this scene.  Enjoy.

Continue reading →

Flash Fiction: Blood in the Desert

Posted on by Henry

moon

This week’s dose of flash fiction comes inspired by Chuck Wendig, as per usual.  This time around, I was supposed to start a story with one of the sentences submitted last week as my prompt.  I chose the edited version of a sentence submitted by The Story Hive.  After realizing that I had to rewrite what I’d initially created, I used this week’s project to experiment with timing in narration.  I also tried to continue with a character that you’ve seen before.  You’ll probably still enjoy it. Continue reading →

Flash Fiction? It Wasn’t Me

Posted on by Henry

il_570xN.195917181I totally would have worn this in high school

I spent more words introducing this than writing it.  Bizarre, but useful since I have so much other work I really ought to be doing.  Anyway.  Chuck Wendig’s challenge this week is to write the opening sentence to something, nothing more.  Here goes:

If there’s one thing I’ve learned from being a teenager, it’s that plausible deniability is everything.

What I Usually Write, or, Responsibilities to One’s Audience

Posted on by Henry

Annex - Rathbone, Basil (Adventures of Robin Hood, The)_02

More or less what I grew up with.

I love adventure fiction.  It’s makes up a large portion of what I write, probably because it’s what I grew up reading in books and creating in role-playing games.  When I don’t write adventures, I still generally use the climactic structure to resolve the primary tensions of the piece.  Unless I feel like experimenting, I don’t usually do the “unfinished story” thing and leave such tension unresolved.  But you probably already know this, so why the hell am I telling you?

Continue reading →

Flash Fiction: Worth a thousand words

Posted on by Henry

CBsH823W8AEwt0V

Another week, another piece of flash fiction.  This time, Chuck Wendig has prompted us with a photo, as seen above.  My response is below.  Enjoy.

***

You know how they say that a picture is worth a thousand words?  Well.  I thought that the painting of a fairy king on my manager’s wall meant that he was nerdy, liked fantasy, and that we might get along, seeing as how I think fairies are pretty cool and have been kind of a mythology fanboy for a long time.  I should have paid more attention. Continue reading →