Recent content by Matty Lee

I'm not sure an action scene would have much character. How a battle is written is going to be dependent on a wide variety of factors, including the scale of the battle, the weapons employed, who is fighting, why the are fighting, who is important, and where they are. Intricate details of combat...

Sir, we keep the machines and music at a level that pleases most of the occupants. We believe in democracy here.

I got bored one day and decided, since a forum I was waiting for hadn't come into existence, to make one of my own. I present to you all "A Coffeehouse Couch". It is centered primarily around writing, but contains sections for miscellaneous discussion, introduction, and other related material...

Neither the Socio nor Psychopath however they defined are particularly useful villains to me. Neither of these people has any tragedy about them, no sympathetic pathos, no admirable qualities. Evil isn't sociopathic. Evil is every single one of man's good traits turned upon itself. Evil is the...

Such a blow would be possible. You could certainly hit a target. However the probability of the arrow not losing a good portion of it's energy in striking the ground is low. Sure it can still penetrate the eye, but what was obviously a screw-up shot (ricochet) would be less enamoring than a shot...

I write for the types of people who like what I write. If you don't like what I write, well... that's that.

Swords, ones that were actually good for combat, were generally harder to make (and more expensive) than the tools that were used by peasants and townspeople for their daily work. They were also generally sidearms, and symbols of aristocratic power, much like a fancy officer's pistol. Swords are...

Evil needs to be meaningful Making your villian a racist, or a rapist on the side is cheap. What is the purpose of your portraying evil? What do you think evil is? Don't necessarily show people something obvious. Everyone knows killing babies is wrong (although the people who do it and the...

Unless the dragons practice a food communism and share everything having too many dragonlings would cost too much food. Eliminating eggs that aren't yours would be too dangerous to be worth the effort. Hope all you want, it won't save you.

If they are stealing eggs and sneaking them into other's nests and other odd reproduction strategies, it won't necessarily be their genes, but their learned survival strategies that will be passed on. If I steal your child and raise him as my own, my ideas and strategies are passed on while...

My question is why you began writing in the first place. Exploring your original motivations may wake up some of that passion that made you put words to paper, or bytes to your hard-drive. Did you write for money, for attention or adulation, for the sheer effort of it, for the fun of it, for...

I generally don't like bullying because it generally is "Note to Reader: This character is a jerk and this one is a perpetual victim/avenger". Also, I've never cared about the social problems of people my own age. Most of this bullying stuff, despite my exposure to it, doesn't qualify as more...

The real world contains endless inspiration. What do you think dragon's would look like in different ecosystems (not even desert/island/mountain, but different forests, continents, different diets etc.) and how would they adapt. Also, there can be several species in one area who have different...

Fantasy isn't doing too bad. Look at YA sales, and GRRM has a HBO show after his mammoth series that is actually doing well. Fantasy is doing fine. It's old fashioned "High Fantasy" which seems to be to be digressing into "Forgotten Relams" rewrites. There's nothing wrong with "Forgotten Relams"...

I think there is no right way to write a combat scene, each fitting into particular circumstances (what you desire to communicate), however, there are wrong ways to write a combat scene. 1. Writing a combat scene that focuses on unnecessary or external details. 2. A combat scene that isn't...