I’m not much one for politics, sports, celebrities, news––my mind tends to retreat upon such topics. I’d rather occupy myself with a fictional world than brush up on what’s going on in the real world at the moment. I’d rather be writing a sci-fi novel or watching anime than finally looking up the names of the presidential candidates for the 2020 election or watching people put their lives at risk over a ball and call it sport where the commercials have more screen time than the game itself. I realize there are pros and cons to this, but the fact is, unless it’s history, I’m not a fan of reality.
Read More »Category: Matter of Opinion
Suzanne Collins will Give 2020 a Hunger Games Prequel
Being a Writer in a World of Instant Gratification
Most of the time, the best things take the most time.
As a writer, this statement could not be more true.
Breaking the Fourth Wall: Writing, Sci-Fi, and Speculation
Ever since I decided to become a writer and publish a book, my stories have been all about breaking the fourth wall. No matter who the characters are, what the genre is, or what the story is about, the plot is centered on a main character who is seemingly trapped in reality. Leo from Netherworld is given the Knowledge that another world exists, and he does all he can to break free of the suffocating misfortunes of life on Earth and visit this planet. Finley from Fiction’s Lie (yes, I just recently changed his name) must travel to the world he created in his fantasy novel to save his characters and reason with his hero who has gone renegade.
In Which I Discuss the Best Weapons in the World
In case you don’t understand this blog post’s title:
You’re welcome.
So, quite obviously, I’ll be talking about books today. I was recently tagged by the epic Aria Maher for the Writer’s Book Tag, and I couldn’t ever pass up an opportunity to talk about books, hence this post. To name a few, I’ll talk about a book I’ve never read, a book that has made me cry, and a favorite fantasy novel I recommend.
Let’s get to it, shall we?
Fixing Tropes in Fantasy Fiction
The Google dictionary defines the fantasy genre as “a genre of imaginative fiction involving magic and adventure, especially in a setting other than the real world.” With fantasy, you have freedom. You can make whatever you want possible. You can create your own worlds, your own species, your own rules and laws. And yet, fantasy does have its stereotypes. And that’s okay. I find a lot of similarities between my writing and many other fantasy books I’ve read. Tropes aren’t necessarily a bad thing, unless you’re relying on them in an attempt to box your story into a particular genre. If you’re a fantasy writer who’s struggling with eliminating stereotypes, or if you’re any kind of author who wants a fun and slightly sarcastic post to read, you may benefit from the following tropes and the possible alternatives for each.
My Theories on the Bright Eyes Podcast: #wheresmilo
A little warning before you read on: This post will have spoilers after about halfway through, but for those of you who have not listened to the Bright Eyes Podcast yet, I have written up a little introduction just for you to get you interested. (After you’ve listened to the latest episode, you’re more than welcome to come back and flail over theories with me. Cheers!)
My Interpretation of “Trees” by Twenty One Pilots
A writer can write something with a certain theme, idea, or message in mind, and yet ten individuals can listen to or read that something and each of them will be impacted in a different way. Different people, depending on their own perspectives or walks of life will take something away that was totally different from the writer’s intention.
People may argue that writing a song with a specific message or theme that can have multiple potential perspectives is achieving the height of the art. I think that success comes from delivering a message in a song or story that everyone who reads or hears it not only identifies the writer’s intentional theme, but also notices other ideas and messages that they take away form it based on their personalities, current life situations, perspectives, etc. And I think that that is achieving the highest point of success when writing anything. I want to impact others with the message I weave into my story or song, and yet I want listeners or readers to take other things away from it that I didn’t put there that inspires or encourages them or causes them to think about things I never even thought of associating with the thing I wrote.
Michael’s Movie Mentions: Storytelling Similarities in Movies and Writing
Did you know that, in many ways, the art of making movies (visual storytelling) is often similar to the art of writing? How the director and director of photography choose to portray a story by way of camera is, believe it or not, comparable to some extent with writing books. And that is what I will be doing in this post: showing the similarities in the psychology of camera storytelling (movies) and storytelling by way of written word (your favorite book, for example). This similarity may stem from the fact that Storytelling is a universal art, developed over the millennia of mankind. Movies and the written word are merely different categories of storytelling, so it makes sense that there would be many similarities between the two. I will show you just a few of them in this post.
Life Beyond Our Galaxy: In Which I Examine Possibilities and Rant about Sci-Fi
Last fall, I went to an ICR conference (Institute for Creation Research) and got to hear an astrophysicist, Jason Lisle, talk about how science confirms biblical creation. It was absolutely enthralling. The overall topic isn’t related to this post, but he did mention the impossibility of extraterrestrial life forms towards the end.
