Affordance is an invented word [1] that has a history of redefinition, so it’s an appropriate first entry for this Writer’s Grimoire in which I’m going to redefine, repurpose or reframe words such that they serve as convenient handles for concepts that are useful for writers. I’m familiar with affordance from the tech world, where […]
A grimoire is a book that lists the names of demons by which they can be summoned and bound to serve. I’m adopting that as a metaphor for this dictionary of writing concepts, some of which I haven’t seen discussed elsewhere, some of which I’m figuring out for myself by writing about them and attaching […]
An unusual topic, perhaps, for my first post in nearly a year. Ironic? Or aspirational? Let’s go with the second answer for now, but only time will tell. In any case, a friend of mine is thinking of starting a blog, and marshaling my supportive arguments (oh, you totally should, because …) prompted me to […]
Last time I talked about the rules for playing comedy, then hedged my bets with an epigraph from Pirates of the Caribbean. The truth is, there aren’t rules as such. Rules imply that if you break them, you’re doing something wrong, but comedy is pretty pragmatic. Funny is funny, whether you do it “right” or […]
“… the code is more what you’d call ‘guidelines’ than actual rules.”—Geoffrey Rush,Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl A bit of common, but terrible, advice I see on playing comedy is to treat it the same as drama. There’s a grain of truth in that, but it’s a grain that’s embedded […]
In lingustics, false friends are words in distinct languages that seem similar but have different meanings. [1] For example, if you’re learning Spanish as an English-speaker, you get an immediate vocabulary boost from words like elefante (elephant), universidad (university) and responsibilidad (responsibility). Then you run into embarazada which, to your chagrin, does not mean embarrassed […]
I’ve been writing a fair amount of interactive fiction lately, and I run into the problem that, when people ask what I’m working on, there’s no easy answer. Everybody knows what novels, short stories and screenplays are but interactive fiction defies easy characterization. “Sort of a digital Choose Your Own Adventure story,” is what I […]
How to keep a writer in suspense? Short answer: accept their stuff for publication, then sit on it indefinitely. Long answer: (I deleted the long answer. It was starting to sound kinda whiny.) Suffice to say, I’ve written a bunch of stuff that is waiting to be published or otherwise made manifest. But forget that […]
Last year feels like the year I finally hit my stride as a writer. There’s still a lot of room for improvement, particularly on the publishing/remuneration front, but I managed to bang out quite a few words on a mostly consistent schedule and even got paid for some of it. A huge part of that […]
One of the reasons I write this blog dispensing unqualified [1] and unsolicited writing advice is that I’ve learned much more from my struggling peers than I have from successful writers, so I’m returning the favor. Learn from my pain! You should, of course, take everything my amateur self says with a healthy does of […]
Love, Blood & Rhetoric 