Recent content by Insolent Lad

My fantasy is as realistic as I can make it. That way it's more believable. And I do write what is generally considered realism too; really, it's all kind of one.

There is a mix of fauna (and flora, for that matter) in my primary fantasy cycle. Some pretty much identical to what we know here, some prehistoric holdovers (both megalodon and mosasaurs swim the seas), some that have found there way in from other worlds, such as ghalun (ghouls, which are...

I got hold of the entire Discworld series and have been working my way through them (with an occasional break to avoid Pratchett fatigue). Up to #13 so far.

Yes, it works great (at least sometimes) on the stage where a character is explaining his inner thoughts not to another character but to the audience. We can use the interior monologue for that but stories these days rarely do an omniscient peek inside the villain's head.

Woody Woodpecker, because I can do the laugh.

That sounds a bit like how mana operates among Oceanic peoples.

I've always followed the Tolkien example and jotted down stuff on the backs of scrap paper.

From my short story, Fair Games: “There are dragon sports, I would assume.” “To be sure. When I was young I would enjoy a bit of one-on-one air hockey. The idea is to keep the, um, puck from hitting the ground. That’s a point for the other dragon.” “Puck?” “Oh, we would use whatever was...

I think I would have to admit that my original idea of what elves are (or were or would be or something) came from Poul Anderson's The Broken Sword, which I read as a teen well before being introduced to anything by Tolkien. Not nearly as noble a bunch as those in LOTR and somewhat closer to...

Duh, that's INauthentic.

In that I use little profanity in my own life, I tend to feel awkward and a bit authentic putting it into the mouths of my characters. I feel it is safer simply to avoid using it much, but, yes, occasionally someone does have to let something rip. Usually something pretty mild.

Read critically. Try to understand how and why authors do things you might or might not like, and feel do or do not work. Put those thoughts into words as reviews, to make them solid. That's advice received as a poet but applies equally well to prose.

The Song of Hiawatha, almost as soon as I could read. It gave me a lifelong love for both poetic language and myth.

My first writing (perhaps not surprisingly) was poetry. I was making up little poems before I could write, for that matter. And my first 'serious' writing as an adult was also poetry, which did earn me some recognition (and very little money!). Then I started writing magazine articles which did...

I would add The Godfather to that list. What a slog the novel was.