Recent content by skip.knox

>I tend to focus heavily on dialogue and characters and realize afterward that I barely described where they are. I have a tendency to do this, too. It's nearly always in first draft, and I think I know why I do it. It's because in the first draft I'm primarily struggling with figuring out what...

I was sloppy, as often happens. Editor indeed. Presuming one has hired an editor, of course.

Whenever something weird happens in a web browser, always blame the cache. If the cache has been cleared, blame the version. If the version is current, disconnect the caller. --- HelpDesk Guidebook v2.3.96

There's no formula, with one exception. If you're aiming to trad publish, then your chapters should be however long your publisher says they should be. Don't try to anticipate; they'll give you guidelines. For self-pub, just write to whatever feels right to you. Give the finished work to some...

My world is also alt-medieval. Because I posit the survival of the Roman Empire as well as of polytheism, there's no legal prohibition. At least among humans. Dwarves, elves, ogres, giants, pixies, sprites, orcs, trolls ... I haven't addressed the matter for those people. The whole matter of...

1) What do you use to build tension in slower chapters? 2) Is there a point where hints start to feel like teasing instead of tension? 3) Any books that do this really well? I'd love some reading recommendations. These are good questions. The first one is actually fairly easy to state, but can...

I do re-read books. What makes me do it? Wrong question. Right question: why do I choose to re-read a book? That question puts the focus not on attributes of the book but upon the reader. A few cases are easy. I have re-read books aloud to family members. I read Dune to my wife. Also, War and...

There's a whole sub-genre for this, called urban fantasy.

Guy Gavriel Kay wrote one called Children of Earth and Sky which takes place in Venice, aboard ships, and in the Balkans (sorry, my memory won't let me be more specific). Not much feudalism there, but it's a great tale. His Lions of al-Rassan is clearly Moorish Spain. I'd place both in roughly...

Welcome! You've completed two books, which is a major accomplishment. I hereby declare you no longer need to prepend "amateur" to "author". Just the one word serves. I'm glad to see you prefer a forum format. So do I, going right back to BBS's! I think you'll find the community here to be...

This one sets my historian's teeth to itching every time. I reckon I can scratch, once in a while. Place is one; Mad Swede has mentioned it. Are we talking Spain? Greece? Denmark? Hey everyone, let's go to Livonia! (I'm old school enough to insist that medieval only applies to Europe and its...

I view this as a false dichotomy. It's not do *this* first rather than *that*. To me, story telling is iterative, and the process can start in any one of several places. Setting is one (that's world-building), but character is another, plot another, and theme yet another. I believe I've done...

OK, so it's a fantasy setting, but ... we don't know it? Ordinary setting (for whatever time period; you didn't specify). Normally, we get Ordinary for a chapter or two, sometimes with hints dropped and sometimes not, but then we step through the wardrobe or fall down the hole and then we are...

I think the oldest full movie would be Nosferatu. I've also seen Metropolis and M. That would be 1922, 1927, and 1931. It's really striking how radically movies changed over the course of those two decades, 1920s and 1930s. It's a huge leap from the silent vampire in 1922 and Dorothy in Oz...

I have to ask: why do you think you have a fantasy novel? No magic, no monsters ...? There is an older genre of "fantastic" stories in which extraordinary things happen, often crossing over into horror or at least dread. If the setting and people are all entirely ordinary, then where's the...