Recent content by Incanus

In the Osten Ard books by Tad Williams, the immortal Sithi (who are basically elves) are quite obviously derived from Japanese culture. I can only guess at the motives, but I suspect it is a way to make them 'exotic' from the viewpoint of western cultures. I rather like it, and it seems to...

Unless 'plan' is here defined differently than I would image, aren't fantasy stories involving a quest essentially using 'plans'? The Hobbit--the opening chapter shows fifteen characters discussing a plan (to recapture the mountain stronghold from the dragon who had taken it over)...

For me, learning and applying structure helped quite a lot. I don’t think I could have completed my rough draft (what I call a ‘half-draft’) without it. You will likely have to experiment a little to figure out what method(s) work for you. Any suggestion that you must rigidly or slavishly...

For human and humanoid characters, this makes sense more often than not. But for a three-million old malignant entity from Andromeda, a name like 'Bob' or 'Sue' will come off as comedy or farce.

I think you are the only one who can answer this question. I can safely say that I am one-hundred and eighty degrees in the other direction. I would never finish anything if I worked on four projects at once. Also, I don't get distracted by new ideas for stories because they are exceedingly...

I suppose I would use a limited-third POV, and do every chapter (or scene) from one of the three POVs, trying to make sure they are relatively balanced (in terms of word count) between them. But this also means tackling three fully developed character arcs. I'm doing something a little similar...

Ah, it's good to see a Clark Ashton Smith fan. We are rarer than hen's teeth, for some reason. Welcome--I hope you hang around for a while.

I’ll keep this a tad short, not knowing if this poster will return or not. First of all, I second AE Lowan’s post—stick around, join a conversation, use the critique request section of the site—that’s the way things work best. In general, this is pretty good. I like that there is a sense of...

I have a bunch of quotes about first drafting from writers printed out and stuck on my wall where I work. The one from Maya Angelou seems appropriate here: When I'm writing, I write. And then it's as if the muse is convinced that I'm serious, and says, "Okay, Okay, I'll come." When it comes...

Interesting. I haven't used Grammarly, but I know the spell-checker in MS Word is obviously less authoritative than the Oxford English Dictionary I use. Also, I have a better ear for language than Word does. One neat thing about the passage from LotR above, is that there aren't any archaic...

I’ve been re-reading Lord of the Rings recently. I was struck by a certain passage, in the chapter ‘The Ring Goes South’. The Fellowship is gathered together and about to depart Rivendell, and Elrond has a few last words to impart, saying that the other members of the company need not go with...

This mostly sounds about right. My problem with 'ideas are cheap' is the implication that they are all of equal value. Yes, many, many books are made out of cheap ideas, and do fairly well. This reader, however, won't be purchasing many of those. I'm the first to admit my novel will likely...

I don't have much of a beef with adverbs in general. I don't specifically hunt them down in my prose, because I don't abuse them in the first place. But glaringly bad adverb use looks lazy, and hurts the prose. I have no problem with writing that aims to entertain. That's what I'm doing...

Well, in my case, I'd have to sign up first, before nuking it. But that doesn't make much sense, does it? I think I've seen a Facebook page once or twice, briefly. Never signed up. I didn't get it, and still don't. Never used any of the other stuff either. This site is about the most I do...

To take that last point first, I don't mind robust debate at all. I'm glad you are expressing your views here. I am probably pretty mediocre at this, at best, but I try. Unfortunately, you won't win me over with The Belgariad stuff. As it so happens, I have been re-reading that series lately...