Having finally finished Elden Ring, playing probably more than I should have, I felt compelled to write a review of it, not of the “you should or should not buy this game” variety, but of the “this is what this game made me feel and what I felt was worth talking about” variety. Full spoilers […]
Game Review: Assassin’s Creed Valhalla
I’ve been playing Assassin’s Creed game since the first, though usually not right when they come out. Typically I’ll wait long enough that I can pick them up on sale with all the DLC included, which is great for getting the version of the game with the most polish and the fewest bugs. I tend […]
Narrative Legos and the Monomyth
In 2016, Ken Levine (of Bioshock fame) gave a talk on “Narrative Legos”. I just got done watching it, and think it misses some fundamental aspects of what makes storytelling work, and because I have a blog where I can talk about things that I don’t think are much interest to people other than me, […]
Programming the Monomyth
I’ve lately been watching a bunch of GDC (and other game conference) talks, specifically about how to do narrative when you have to worry about the player doing something stupid and unexpected. Some of this interest has been because I’ve been playing Wildermyth of late, and little things have been, if not bugging me, then […]
Creating Interesting Magic (and Characters, Plots, and Worlds)
I’ve been long overdue for a blog post like this, because it’s one of the main things that I either get questions about or hear people struggle with. The questions are usually in the form of “how do you come up with this stuff” or “where do you get your ideas from”, while the struggles […]
How to Write a Web Serial
With Worth the Candle concluded at a hefty 1.6 million words over four years, I can finally give some authoritative tips! I can’t promise that these tips will work for everyone, because writing follows some very individual processes, but I think they generalize well. If you want a more general post on the more business/audience/process […]
Post Mortem: Worth the Candle
As I write this, Worth the Candle isn’t quite done, but it’s got so little left to go that it might as well be finished. It’ll clock in at roughly 1.6 million words, having taken approximately four years to complete. This post mortem will give some broad thoughts on what went right, what went wrong, […]
Interesting Things to do with Time Loops
Time loops are a relatively established genre of fiction, and while Groundhog Day wasn’t the first, I think it lays down a lot of the foundation for the genre and demonstrates an essentially perfect form of the basic structure. Someone realizes that they wake up in the same time and place no matter what, and […]
The Problem With Writing Nazis
Nazis are a common punching bag, with good reason. If you need a bad guy, then the Nazis are easy to go for, because they’re so clearly reprehensible, and no one is going to get mad about it except the kind of people that you’d want to offend. All that I have no problem with. […]
AI Dungeon Completions: The Marriage Proposal
I’ve been playing around with AI Dungeon a little bit again, and got to what I thought was a rather funny scenario: a man, Duncan, returns from the war, and proposes to a princess. Everything before that isn’t terribly interesting, but the underpinning trope here is that someone answers a marriage proposal by revealing a […]
Substantial Differences Between Juniper and Myself
Some very mild spoilers for Worth the Candle follow. Also, a warning that I wrote this while in the mood for some introspection, and none of it is very interesting. Juniper is a self-insert, but a loose one, whose life is informed by my own, but not a direct copy. There are a few reasons […]
Rational Fiction as Narrative Focus
Preamble (you can skip this) /r/plotholes is one of my least favorite subreddits, mostly because there simply aren’t that many plotholes in popular films and books. What the sub gets filled with instead, as often pointed out by commenters there, are questions that seek explanation or clarification of the plot, or questions that point out […]
Serial Writing, An FAQ
What’s serial fiction? Serial fiction is any form of fiction that’s published serially, rather than all at once. Technically speaking, any long series of books is serial fiction, but here, it mostly means something that’s put out chapter-by-chapter, and usually written chapter-by-chapter as well rather than being done before the first chapter goes out. This […]
The Dark Wizard Of Donkerk, Chapter 16: Epilogue
Hirrush sat down on the bed beside Hirrush, laid back, closed his eyes, and dipped into the mental realm. He looked over his cottage, spent some time making sure that everything was in order, and then breached into Hirrush’s mind. He found Hirrush sitting on the edge of a cliff, looking out onto calm clouds. […]
The Dark Wizard Of Donkerk, Chapter 15: The Crown in the Castle
Sofia had visited the seedy parts of Marurbo before, hiding under her cloak while seeking out spirits, but none so bad as this. There were parts of the capital city where wages were low and troubles were high, where the city guards treaded lightly and people kept their mouths shut when questioned about a crime. […]