Editing your completed or semi-complete work.

As I cast about for something to write about today, I noticed what windows I had open. At the moment, I’m working on editing a short story for book 4 in the Course Books series. So let’s talk about that.

Let’s talk about fictional weapons.

Given that I’m a fantasy/sci-fi writer, you know this is exactly the sort of ground I was going to tackle sooner or later.

We can test for these things.

Today I’m going to review a good character-building tool that I’ve been using for some time. This is the “Universal Mary-Sue Litmus Test” a web page created some time ago and actually recently updated. I’ve known about it for a few years now, and like to run the test on characters every so often just to get an over-all feel.

The awesome might of wiki technology.

Well, I’ve linked repeatedly to my own personal wiki, I figure its about time I explain why. A wiki can be one of the most powerful tools available for series writing, expecially genre fiction where you want to have a lot of details.

Today, I’d like to discuss something near and dear to my heart: Back to the Future.

As writers, we can learn a lot from movies. Some movies are pretty lame, sure, some are only awesome because of good cinematography and bug-budget special effects(things we cannot copy in writing). But many movies have exceptionally good writing, and that is something we can learn from.

How about a little taste?

I won't be doing this very often, but as I craft this new series I think every now and then I will post a short segment. I don't even know where this scene is going, but it'll be somewhere in the Consecution Books:

Spaceships and seaships.

The sci-fi genre takes a lot of flak for comparing space travel to seamanship. While most of this is just overworked humorists looking for something to rib, a few people take it as actual criticism. Unfortunately, this is pretty unfair.

A date which will live in infamy.

Yes, today is the 69^th anniversary of the attacks on Pearl Harbor, I’m pretty sure you all knew that. I hope you did, anyway. Now that the important history bit is out of the way, let’s learn how we can use events like this in our writing.

Be wary your pop-culture references.

So continuing in the series of “mistakes young writers make that can hopefully correct”, let’s discuss keeping your work semi-current and pertinent. I see this one a lot, oh boy do I see it a lot…

The role of economics in good writing.

I think one of the key factors that puts good, believable world-design above the sort of stuff that barely makes into Saturday morning cartoons, is, in fact, economics. And I don’t mean a fictional in-world economy, I mean thinking with economics.