This weekend, I picked up the guitar, something I wasn’t sure I’d do again for a long time yet. If you had told me back in college, when I was strumming away almost hourly, that I would have dropped the guitar in my late twenties, I would have scoffed at you.
Perhaps I would have even played you a ditty about it. I was fond of ditties. Continue reading →
The arrival of Skyfall at my house this week, along with the announcement that Star Wars will be doing spin-off stories, has had me thinking quite a bit about reboots. It’s funny that a franchise like Bond, which was wallowing in its own mediocrity not even a decade ago, could become the poster child for how to reinvigorate an intellectual property, but I guess stranger things have happened — like J.J. Abrams sitting astride two of the most beloved sci-fi universes that have been or ever will be created. Or Daniel Craig turning out to be one heck of a Bond. Seriously, did anyone see either of those things coming? Continue reading →
There will never be enough time to consume all the content you love.
Yikes, that seems really cynical when I look at it again. But alas, I feel like it’s true — or at the very least, it’s true for me. There will never be enough time to watch all the shows I want to see, read all the books I’m dying to read (including graphic novels and comic books) or take in all the brilliant Internet posts that are waiting in that gigantic online whirlpool.
Because you see, as crappy as it is to say, we’ve only got a finite amount of time in which to consume this content. Continue reading →
After my post about writing bad epic fantasy the other day, a friend of mine had a nit to pick with me regarding one of my qualms with the genre.
“Friend!” she cried, brandishing a steel sword kissed by Death. “I disagree with your list!”
“Bring your most logical argument!” I shrieked in reply, magical power coiling around me like a writhing serpent.
Actually, none of that happened. We were playing 7 Wonders around a dinner table, and she said she didn’t like that I said rule dumps were lame. But sometimes I really do wish my life had magical battles. Continue reading →
I’ve got a strange love-hate thing going on with epic fantasy, guys. In some ways, it was my first love. High tales of chosen one heroes and grandiose adventure-taking is what spawned my love of reading in the first place. Things like Record of Lodoss War, the Wheel of Time, Final Fantasy games and the like. Despite the genre’s numerous downfalls, it’s the thing that I still want to write again someday, even if I’m a bit burned out on epic fantasy as a whole for the moment.
So, in preparation for that day of passionate reunion, of once again walking the fields of Middle Earth or a loving rip-off of it, here are some of the best tips I can give you on how to write the most amazing, generic epic fantasy of all time.
Note: And for the record, none of this is serious. It’s so hard to tell over the intertubes, sometimes.
Hey, creative friends. We need to talk. There’s something you’re desperately trying to do and it’s probably hurting you and you don’t even know it.
You need to quit trying to “make it.” Continue reading →
Still in the plotting/scheming/maniacal laughing stages of The Jimmy Project, I’ve been knee deep in story structure, character motivations and all kinds of other buzzwords that writers use to make themselves sound super smart and sometimes write words good. For my last novel, I sort of used a process called discovery writing, or if you’re feeling nasty, pantsing — both just fancy terms that mean making this crap up as you go. Continue reading →
While I’m taking a bit of time away from The Collector’s Legacy, I’ve started some preliminary work on a new book, The Jimmy Project. This work-in-progress is a classic superhero story with a bit of a twist. Continue reading →
One of my favorite books of all time is Name of the Wind, by Patrick Rothfuss. And as much as I love it, the first 200 pages are a bit hard to stomach. We see the main character, Kvothe, stumbling homeless through the streets of Tarbean, orphaned after an attack on his parents, and we keep asking ourselves what the point is. And then, all of a sudden, we see it. And the book doesn’t let up after that moment. Part of me wonders if that process of realization is part of what cemented the book’s pedestal status in my mind.
There’s a moment, about one-fourth of the way through J.K. Rowling’s newest bestseller, The Casual Vacancy, when the story clicked for me. Continue reading →
If you’re a visitor of GamerSushi, the video game blog I pen with some hilarious cohorts, then you’ll know that I’m on a big blogging schedule kick at the moment. As a result, I’ll be using a content schedule here at What Eddy Writes, in order to give myself some guidelines about the content I’ll be posting.
Mondays: Writing about… well, writing.
Wednesdays: Writing about what I’m reading.
Fridays: Flash Fiction
We’ll see how that goes, won’t we? Continue reading →