Kishōtenketsu

Kishōtenketsu

Lately I've been getting questions about Kishōtenketsu, the four-part story structure of classical Chinese, Japanese, and Korean literature. My Twitter friends sent along a useful post explaining the concept. Let’s start with the word itself. It’s made up of the names of the four different acts of the structure: Ki…
July 16, 20184 Comments
Chuck Dixon’s 10 Comic Commandments

Chuck Dixon’s 10 Comic Commandments

Longtime A list comic book writer Chuck Dixon reveals his Ten Commandments of Comic Book Scripting. 1. OPEN STRONG.Get your story off and running. 2. ONLY ESSENTIAL DIALOGUE.Just the talking you need to put the point across. 3. AT LEAST THREE PIECES OF ACTION PER STORY.They can be mixed major…
July 3, 201810 Comments
To See or Not to See

To See or Not to See

An anonymous reader poses a timely and vitally important question for anyone who is torn between not giving money to people who hate him and supporting innocent creatives who might be harmed by a boycott. Diversity and Comics and others have argued that we should support the few unconverged titles…
June 30, 201822 Comments
Overcome or Succumb

Overcome or Succumb

Background: Artist. Foreground: "Artiste". Forget everything you've been force-fed by the literati about artists being special snowflakes exempted from the laws of supply and demand because they serve only the whims of the muse. To succeed, novelists must be no less market-facing than plumbers or lawyers. Friend of the blog…
June 26, 201812 Comments
How to Argue with SJWs

How to Argue with SJWs

Experience shows that the best advice on how to argue with SJWs is that you shouldn't. You should mock them relentlessly instead. A relatively recent demonstration from Twitter: Lesson 1: Do not answer SJWs' questions. Make them answer yours. As you can see, I set a trap designed to be…
June 20, 201810 Comments
21st Century Publishing

21st Century Publishing

Red Pill Religion put on quite a show last night. It was my honor to join new pub all-stars Nick Cole, John C. Wright, and Russell Newquist for a rousing and informative discussion of 21st century publishing strategies. It comes as a surprise to me that some aspiring authors haven't…
June 18, 20184 Comments
Fire Your Agent

Fire Your Agent

Galaxy's Edge co-author Nick Cole forwards a dire warning to authors from Kristine Kathryn Rusch. Here's KKR: The news broke publicly over the holiday weekend. If you blinked, you missed it. The bookkeeper for a prestigious New York literary agency pled guilty to embezzling millions from the agency, leaving the agency…
June 1, 201812 Comments
Three Big Questions

Three Big Questions

Author, editor, and publisher Jeff Duntemann poses the three questions that authors of speculative fiction must ask when designing magic systems. There are three Big Questions you need to ask yourself as you take on a task of designing a magical system: What is the source of magical power? Where…
May 21, 20185 Comments
Cat Pay Pig

Cat Pay Pig

A Twitter user's reaction to yesterday's post perfectly demonstrates the effectiveness of aiming for the emotions instead of the intellect. To the untrained eye, my interlocutor may look like a vaguely anthropomorphized cat, but its semi-literate tweeting soon reveals its true nature as a Disney paypig. Now, some might be…
April 25, 201819 Comments
Trad Pub Is Dead

Trad Pub Is Dead

AAA video game designer Mark Kern recently took to Twitter seeking publishing advice, and luckily for him Galaxy's Edge co-author Nick Cole answered. That was quite an enlightening barrage of truth bombs Nick dropped there. I'm also sure he's earned another satisfied customer. Sadly, a nasty case of tradpub Stockholm syndrome…
April 23, 201811 Comments