Ever since metaphorical pen was first set to metaphorical paper, a debate has raged: which is better, the happy ending or the sad one? The sides are many and varied, each side disagreeing with itself about why it’s right and
Good stories do not use miracles to solve problems, the lore says, and they do not use miracles to solve problems because miracles, according to common wisdom, destroy a story’s stakes, rendering great thrillers into dramatic yawn-factories. Yet the great
So, last week I went over three categories of worldbuilding problems (irremediable, unremedied, and inherent) and four types of wounds they can inflict on a story (to the setting, the plot, the characters, or the theology). Today we’re going to
Worldbuilding, no matter how you cut it, is a difficult task, at least if you’re actually trying to do it right. Sometimes you feel like you have to become an expert in a hundred different fields at once; sometimes, you’re
UPDATE: I’ve revisited this topic in more detail and with more accuracy here. Go there instead, please. ‘Death of the author’ is a fairly grim name for a somewhat controversial approach to interpretation. Whether fortunately or unfortunately, it does not