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The loudest people in the room, the ones who dominate the conversation, aren’t the most interesting ones.  They mostly just have this trick of being animated while they talk.  Excited about what they have to say.  At great length and, often, volume.  Wit and charm help.  So does a sense of order in one’s storytelling. […]

Your words are pointless but don’t say them here. Your actions are too small to make a difference, so why don’t you just give up? Your protests are useless and will change nothing but we refuse to tolerate them. You’re just doing this to make yourself sound more important than you really are. And if

Cheesy is when you have something that uses a lot of tropes, but there’s no twist on the tropes.  Cheesy-but-good is rereadable and rewatchable cheese. Nothing wrong with cheesy per se. But once you put a twist on it, you’re doing something on another level entirely. … If you liked this post, check out my

Bias is like smoking.  Or rather it sets up shop on the same not-quite-conscious level as smoking.  A trigger occurs and the bias follows with a knee-jerk reaction.  It’s not a conscious intention, so it’s easy to justify.  It feels natural, part of the natural order of things–maybe not right, exactly, but that’s just the way

But can’t you see I’m the me?  The only true me?  I’m the special one.  Any group to which I belong is automatically the special group.  In any situation which is black and white, the white side is the one that has built itself around me, because I’m the me.  I graciously admit when I’m

I woke up in the middle of the night with this really great, really scary idea for a story.  I didn’t write it down.  I went back to sleep. You know how it is when that usually happens.  You wake up and go, “Oh, crap.  I’ve completely forgotten that idea.  Why didn’t I write it

I’m not that interested in plot outlines that are driven by character development (Joseph Campbell, et al.).  In fact I don’t give a damn about how my characters change. What I want to do is change the reader.

…the art of splitting people into two groups and trying to be both of them. Pantsers: WTF, dude, none of this makes any sense. Character voice is good. Lyrical, poetic. Starts with a showy bit of action or witty dialogue that comes completely out of nowhere. “But can’t you just get this?  Are you stupid?  I

Three ways to do it: The character gets deeply humiliated right away. Events surrounding the character are such that you immediately go, “That’s why X is so broken.” The character is so deeply charming that you get over it. You can also mix the three. You can’t write a dull character who’s mildly unpleasant and

When people talk about the risks of not having print books anymore, I’m struck by how hard it is for humanity to assess risks accurately. “It’s all fun and games until world civilization collapses and we have NO MORE BOOKS.” The chance of civilization as we know it collapsing to the point of irretrievably losing