Recent content by Prince of Spires

It really depends on what's left standing after the appocalypse. And yes, old textbooks help. Though a lot of those still assume a basic level of having stuff available. Yes, you can get electricity by hand cranking, but what if you need to make the wires to create the dynamo? How would you go...

One thing to consider is if you can merge two or more side characters into one. It creates a tighter narative and fleshes out the world more. It also offers a rewards to attentive readers for remembering these characters. A. E. Lowan 's guard is a nice example. There's nothing wrong per se to...

One important thing with regards to believability is the question, could we reinvent everything we have today simply because we know it exists? The answer, very likely is no. Just think about your own situation, could you build a computer with nothing but your hands as tools? Or a car? Or any...

In my opinion, the actual cast of Lord of the Rings that actually matters is more something between 4 and 20. It's the names people who read the books once or twice remember and can give back. The rest is just part of the setting. In Lord of the Rings, you've got the 4 hobbits, who are the main...

While true, it's also missing my point. Namely that a name generator is not AI, and also that it's impossible for anyone to distinguish between an AI generated name and one taken from a list of baby names. Arklblargh is a silly example. But if I pick an unusual name from somewhere like...

You've got it upside down though. With the way the sun moves across the landscape, the top of the map should be labelled South, not North... Sorry, couldn't resist. Also, it's very pretty in the way of in-world paraphernalia. It very much emphasises the military nature of the story. Which...

There is always the option for magical self-healing. A bit like Wolverine. Magic could be so ingrained in an elf that its body just magics away any disease as long as it's rested enough. As for memories. The thing with kids is that they don't have enough experiences to tie those early memories...

My brain is the same kind of weird I think. It just tends to grab hold of ideas and run wild with them. As a I always used to think this was something everyone did... And have fun with it. I can see something like it exist in Seahaven.

One idea I still have bouncing around my head is to push the idea of magical pixie dust to its distopian extreme. If pixie dust has magical properties, then it stands to reason that people will look for ways to extract it on an industrial scale. Which of course gives you battery cage like pixie...

No, it wouldn't. Firstly, because calling a name generator an AI is really stretching the meaning to include everything done by a computer. But also because there's no way for them to know. The issue isn't so much with it being AI generated as such. It's more to do with the quality of the work...

I have a bunch of lovely notebooks which I would love to use for something. I just don't really have any use for them. I'm a computer first kind of person. All my notes end up on there. I really should find something to take notes about just to be able to use them.

Since A. E. Lowan has (disappointingly...) failed to give you any homework, I guess it's now up to the rest of us to do so. Check out the writing excuses podcast (they have loads of great advice by the way), and then specifically 11.32: The Element of Humor I think that's a good starting point...

I love listening to these kinds of people telling stories of their experiences. I find it endlessly captivating to hear about everything they've been through. Though the interesting things are never the generic details of going from A to B, but always the specifics of feelings and experiences...

How to get better? Same way as with everything else: practice. I think it was Jerry Seinfelt who said that when he was starting out, he wrote a minimum of 1 joke per day. He was intentional about it, the same way many writers try to write something every day. So if you want to be funny, or...

Lots to unpack. First of, Tolkien never definitively settled on the origin of orcs. Them being corrupted elves comes from the Silmarillion. It's one of the ideas Tolkien toyed with and it appears in some of the writing , which ended up in the Silmarillion. However, it's important to note that...