One thing I’ve noticed about blogs is that they’re all in the moment. A post appears, is discussed for a little while, then vanishes into infinity; while some people do do archive trawls, it’s not as necessary for understanding the current material as archive-trawling a webcomic, and if a post is going to be necessary, odds are the writer will back-link from whatever later post references it.
Expository Wisdom focuses on exposition without boring the audience too much, including some ways to get readers intrigued or player characters actively asking.
Scene It Already! discusses tips for getting a scene across, including nontextual cues and one example. Warning: long post.
What We Didn’t Say demonstrates exposition through subtext, as demonstrated by my volunteer side character, Ruby. This wasn’t her last appearance, either; I later used her as my demonstration character for an early method of character creation, and then later to show the applications of a three-post series on character development through crises.
Ever gotten bored with the standard magical imagery? I do. Why Do We See Magic? looks at the reasoning behind visual-centered magic descriptions and some possible alternatives.
Lament of the Generic Villain, the original Generic Villain post that gave me my snarky den-parent of all things villainous, actually came from my having had one of those days, complete with writer’s block. That is, until my loyal editor, listening to me rant about why, tempting though going evil was at times like that, I’d never actually do so, pointed out that it sounded like I had a post right there.
While I rarely write posts that aren’t applicable to gaming one way or another (I thank the RPG Bloggers’ Network for prompting that), July of 2008 was good for two. One, The Problem With Speculative Fiction, was my manifesto against the shoddy internal critique from which speculative fiction suffers even today; the other, On Message Fiction , was a look at why the moral of the story is that a story written around its moral turns off its audience.
Author’s note: You may be noticing that the comment feature on this blog is disabled. This was a network decision and not in any way my fault; when it is rectified, I’ll let you know. I still take suggestions and comments through the email address found on my About page. Thank you!
« Making an Orientation Interesting: Is It Really Possible?