Ando finished his downtime session and now it’s time for Venadikt, the Dwarven Cleric of Astreina to pursue his own objectives. Continue reading This is How we Role – Episode 11b – Fragments
Tag: Fiction
This is How we Role – Episode 11a – Consent
It’s time for a sidestory! After the last major session, we kinda lost a couple of players so the downtime episode had to go away while we hunted for replacement players. We’ve found them and we’re getting things ready to resume the campaign. In the meantime, here’s the first of two downtime side-stories. First up it’s Ando. Continue reading This is How we Role – Episode 11a – Consent
This is How we Role – Episode 10 – Holy Day
So, I know I’ve kinda been missing in action, with no new posts for most if not all of January. There’s a reason for it. Continue reading This is How we Role – Episode 10 – Holy Day
Resuming Fiction!
It’s been a while since I posted my last short story, or even a proposal for one. I’ve been busy, stressed, ill, dealing with issues and many more excuses you really don’t want to know about.
In the past couple of weeks though, as things have cleared up, I’ve managed to finish up a first version of one of the stories I proposed oh so many moons ago: The Song, a Sci-Fi Noir story. The bad news is that I’ve decided to do something else with that particular story as soon as I’ve put it through a few revisions and test reads. I’ve never submitted a short story for publication in a magazine, and it’s something I’ve wanted to do but I’ll admit that it terrifies me. I don’t know if I’m even half the writer needed to pull that one off. But you know, fear is the mind killer after all, so I won’t let that stop me. Continue reading Resuming Fiction!
The Witch of the Wilds
My son, if you’re reading this, then it’s your turn and I’m not around to take your place.
But despite the pleas I’m sure you’re hearing now, urging you to hurry and join the rest of the hunters, I beg you not to follow them, not yet, not until you read this. For in these pages you’ll find something you’ll need if you are to survive the night in the woods, if the spirits and monsters don’t devour you first. Continue reading The Witch of the Wilds
Storytelling – Expectations and Emotional Impact
In an earlier writing guide, I mentioned the importance of proper building for emotional impact, how showing character traits instead of mentioning helps readers form the crucial connections that will enable them to feel whatever it is you want them to, from humour and attraction to anxiety—and if you can manage it, fear.
But there is something to say about expectations. With any genre, emotion and well, story, knowing what is coming or at least having a hint can derail whatever the storyteller attempts. It’s why, for example, horror novels don’t faze me. I have never felt fear from a book, not even a Stephen King novel. I’ve felt revulsion, anxiety even, but that cold drip of dread I have never suffered. Continue reading Storytelling – Expectations and Emotional Impact
Detectives & Dames – Writing the Hardboiled Genre
During my holidays between Christmas and the end of 2016, I decided to jump into one of my story projects and get it going. I had my second novel to finish editing (second draft at around 40%), but decided to instead push on one of the story premises I’d posted some time ago, the Sci-Fi noir “The Song.”
As I sat at home, thinking what I should write, which story to pursue, this one kept coming back to me, with new details, new side-stories that branch off from the main one as the character listens to more of the same hypnotic melodies.
The Song is different to the other premises in that I had already written a few pages of it before I proposed it as another one-shot, and going back to it and advancing I remembered just how difficult it is to write Hardboiled stories, a genre I often and wrongfully call the same name as its film counterpart, “Noir.” Continue reading Detectives & Dames – Writing the Hardboiled Genre
Summersalt – Tracer
According to the latest census by the Summersalt Ministry of Commerce and Security—it makes sense in Summersalt, but nowhere else—the city-state is home to more than 700.000 beings, with humans being the majority. This census is the most accurate report on Summersalt population, if you forget that it ignores all mutants, saltbabies, horrors and aberrations born in the depths and slums, most of them from exposure to some form of raw salt.
Twenty percent of the population make up the upper neighbourhoods, where the Trade Princes, nouveau riches, big merchants and old school nobility live. But among them is a family with enough skeletons in their closet to beat the census by at least twice its reported amount, and enough secrets to burn the city itself a few times over. Continue reading Summersalt – Tracer
Star Wars: Igniters – Time for a Revamp
I think if you check this site for five minutes, you’ll probably come across a couple dozen articles that at least mention Star Wars. It’s a big deal for me, one of my favourite franchises and one where I’ve lost hours on, both reading or in other ways consuming stories or making up my own, be it for RPGs or just simple daydream. Continue reading Star Wars: Igniters – Time for a Revamp
Writing Guide – Naming
When I create a new world for an RPG campaign or fiction, I always spend most of my time with names, be it for characters, place or historical events. For me, it’s central to the process of world building, and depending on the rules of my world and its civilisations, it can help ground my fantasy enough for readers to find their way and grasp the basic concepts.
There isn’t really a big secret with naming, but I’m very particular about it. Continue reading Writing Guide – Naming