Imagine if Star Wars began like this: EXT. OUTER SPACE A Corellian blockade runner sails peacefully across the stars. C-3PO Oh dear! Princess Leia, if Darth Vader attacks us, what will happen to the Death Star plans? LEIA I don’t know, Threepio. I guess we’ll just have to try to safeguard them somehow. Captain, are [...]
A Jedi Like Your Father: What Luke Skywalker Taught Me about Writing Characters
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For the longest time, I struggled with strong character motivation. Still do, actually. Unless I make a conscious effort to do otherwise, I tend to write reactive characters to whom shit happens — who just sort of blunder from one encounter to another, maybe having an emotion or two about it, but with no all-consuming [...]
Half-Witted, Stuck-Up, Scruffy-Looking Book Hoarder
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Some people’s reading histories have formidable pedigrees. For example, I have a close friend whose favorite book of all time is Ovid’s Metamorphosis. Another speaks highly of Stephen Jay Gould. Dig through my literary history, and you’ll find nuggets of Melville and Dostoevsky buried under broad strata of Dragonlance. My earliest reading memories from grade [...]
