Recent content by Prince of Spires

Thanks for that one! It's a topic I have been thinking about a lot. Protagonists tend to get a pass for killing random people just because they're in the way of saving the world (or whatever). We as readers / viewers forget the fall-out of the hero's actions. Just take Elsa from Frozen. In the...

Welcome! What's your favorite Old World race?

There is indeed a lot of room for more advanced advice. You learn a lot about writing by simply doing it and trying stuff. But I'm a firm believer that with outside help you improve a lot more and a lot faster. This is where searching for feedback comes in. Working with an editor taught me a...

The fact that they have no pricing listed is a big red flag for me, for 2 reasons. The first is that the fastest way to go out of business is to have no way of making money. It's nice that you immediately back up your work. But if they go bankrupt and their servers are shut down, then you...

I would say that yes, something magical does happen at book 2, which make generic advice harder to give. The magic is that at this point, you have finished 2 books. It's easy to forget in a world where prolific writers publish a book a month or more, but getting 2 full novels written is pretty...

The same way as with any other experience we write about without having experienced it. I've never flown a dragon, been in a life or death fight, slit someone's throat, discovered an ancient underground temple, or witnessed a human sacrifice. I still write it. There are a few approaches...

Congrats on the release! And don't worry about your short term memory. I've heard it's overrated anyway. At least I seem to remember something like that...

The deeper I get into writing, the more I think story is actually the hardest thing to master. Yes, it all comes down to conflict, and conflict isn't that hard to do. In a scene character A wants one thing and character B wants the opposite. Instant conflict. However, placing that conflict in...

It's why I purely think in word-count, unless a non-writer asks how long my story is. 100 pages can be anything from 25k to 50k words, depending on the settings. But 30k words is always 30k words, no matter how big or small you make them. :) Anyway, congrats on your progress Incanus ! Keep...

I loved Lies of Locke Lamora, though I don't specifically remember the food and drinks. But the setting did feel amazing and lived in, and I'm sure these sort of details played a part in that. The book itself was one of those that reminded me why I love Fantasy. I can heartily recommend it.

I will and will not include an origin story. Yes, both at the same time. At least, that's my plan now. For my current project (which should be something like a 6-12 novel series) I don't plan on writing a chapter or a whole novel about the origin of it all. However, the story is about the...

There is a very big misconception regarding plotting and pantsing that is rarely mentioned, and that is that there is no such thing as "a plotter" and "a pantser." In most conversations about plotting, we pretend there is only 2 extremes, two buckets all writers fall in to. It's useful for many...

Though I like the logic, the sad part is that you didn't prove bacon and vegetables are the same... I can still only eat limited amounts of cake and bacon. Though you do now have me wondering about bacon-cake recipies. After all, bacon goes with everything...

This is always a good explanation of the human condition... He enjoys the books and I like talking to him about them. So it's not so much the fact that he reads them in general. It's more specific things it influences. Like having a character violently and graphically tortured to death. Or...

I never mentioned anything about needing to eat meat or not. However, if having a lot of meat available, then the Netherlands should be one of the healthiest people around, and I don't think we are. We have about the same ratio of pigs to humans in the Netherlands as in Okinawa, and about 5...