Over Christmas break, devoid of either college or work, I did what I had long forsworn, in part from self-perservation, to do: I wrote a piece of fanfiction. Now, it’s not the only fanfiction I’ve written (this poem is based
Part of cultivating your literary skills is reading different genres, if only as a trial, and lately I’ve been getting into the pulps. A short story of Ray Bradbury’s (creepy), some Solomon Kane and Conan the Barbarian (interesting), and now
In this second installment of the series, we’re still looking at G.K. Chesterton, because I’ve been continuing a read-through of his works. Today, though, we’re not looking at his fiction; no, we’re looking at what his literary criticism, at his
G.K. Chesterton, as I have already noted, could write some odd stories. In that, he is far from exceptional. What makes Chesterton so intriguing is his mastery in writing those odd stories, that he could take a premise as outrageous
As last week laid out, Henty has a standard protagonist, and that standard protagonist seems a bit Mary-Sue-ish. He’s not got much vice, he’s really good at what he does, and he sits at the right hand of so many
G.A. Henty wrote about a hundred books with the same protagonist. He did not, to be clear, write a series of that length; his longest series is three books long, and indeed he only wrote three series to my memory.
The Lord of the Rings is famous for taking ‘too long’ to end. The Ring is destroyed in chapter 3 of Book 6 of the story, followed by the final battle with Sauron in chapter 4. The next five chapters
The Lord of the Rings movies have three major pitched battles: Helms Deep, Pelennor Fields, and the Fields of Cormallen. Unfortunately, for all that Helms Deep is a (flawed) masterpiece, its successors are, in my opinion at least, not nearly
If you’ve read much G.K. Chesterton, you’ve probably realized that some of his stories are better starting places than others. Father Brown, generally speaking, is a much gentler introduction to his style and philosophy than Manalive or The Man Who
I’ve read a fair few books on writing. Some books are really interesting theory; some books are really useful instruction on how writing mechanics work. Some are utter balderdash. This book takes another tack. While it has some really good