The New Blather

I started writing a book on melody back in 2008, I think it was. Maybe even a bit before then. But then I got sidetracked programming melody generators, namely my Android app and my online version. I learned quite a lot from these endeavors, so I’m glad I spent time with them before continuing my [...]

It’s almost Easter! So how about a little post on Christianity and science fiction? I recently read this article: Christianity vs. Science Fiction I must admit, with all the political correctness going on the sci-fi world (perhaps from the strange recent mainstream popularity of “geekdom”, mostly comprised on wannabes who consider themselves geeks because they [...]

Some of my earliest games made in good old GW-BASIC were text-based interactive stories; choose-your-own adventures, but a little more complex than the in-print books; not that much more complex, I was only ten years old or so, but being able to use the magic of “variables!!” the story could remember player names and past [...]

I’ve got 11 more scenes left to write for my middle-grade fantasy novel. (Browsing the bookstore today, I concluded that my book is definitely more for the 7-13 year old audience than the teen audience. The main character is twelve years old, and I think the worst thing that happens to him is him getting [...]

I’m continuing to work on my arbitrarily-ultra-secret cartoon idea, and this week I’ve been spending an enormous amount of time thinking about character and, more importantly, character relationships.  And I’ve had a sort of epiphany that none of the books on writing I’ve read seem to mention (not that I’ve read a ton), but it’s [...]

This struck me as a strange blog post. You might have to read the whole thing to understand my response. It says: In my worlds, metaphors have to be consistent with the worldview of a character. … Then I wrote a story (out on submission now) where a metaphor got a little out of hand [...]

My YA fantasy novel finally passed the 50K word mark yesterday. Not much of an accomplishment for professional writers, but this is only the third time I’ve ever gotten this far, and the first time I’ve gotten this far while sticking very close to my original outline. One of my previous stories to get this [...]

I was reading Save the Cat! Strikes Back by Blake Snyder.  It’s geared toward screenwriters, but it holds a lot of great advice for any story creator out there.  Along with his original Save The Cat! book, I’d call it essential reading for any story writer. On page 36, Snyder writes: Conflict offers more challenge, [...]

Been a busy week here. Animation Mentor semester 5 started this week. My mentor this semester is animator Jay Jackson, who has a very impressive 2D background. I’m very excited! Our assignment for the next few weeks will be to add facial animation to our last assignment from last semester, which I am both excited [...]

From the blogs I read and the people I talk to, I haven’t heard the phrase “magical realism” much. What is it, exactly? How is it different from fantasy? From what I can gather from a post I recently read, called Why I Write Magical Realism, my best guess is that “magical realism” is fantasy [...]