This week’s livestream covered (among other things): The drafting process – how to write consistently and finish your first draft, including working based on time or word counts The fraudulent higher education system which fails to provide value to students, and why the government doesn’t seem to care at all. How to write good prose How to write convincing dialogue.
Time for more character archetypes, this time focusing on secondary characters. I go over three classics, including their growth arcs, traits, and typical relationship to other characters. They are: Bad Boy – a character that goes from a nihilistic or chaotic approach to life and authority to a purpose-driven life. Frequently, this is a focus for a romance story, as a Bad Boy represents a popular fantasy: a strong, confident male that can be transformed into being stable while maintaining masculine traits. Best Friend – mostly a foil for the main character, a best friend has different, often opposite, strengths…
Another storycraft video, here I explain the technical details of opening a book, including examples from the classics and my own work to see how I execute the beginning of a book.
Each day the farmwife would go out to the chicken pen, and throw out some feed. Each day, the hen would come out of her coop and eat. One day, the farmwife was in a hurry, so she threw a handful of corn hastily through the wire, and moved on to her other business. Some of the feed fell outside of the pen. The hen pushed her head against the wire, trying to get her beak to the pile of fresh feed beyond, but could not reach it. Finally, she abandoned it and went back to her nest. Later that…
A sheep and a goat were standing in a fenced pasture chewing on alfalfa and wild barley. The goat, tired of the bare patches of earth made by the sheep, leapt up onto the turf roof of the farmhouse and began chewing the cud that grew upon it. “Get down from there you fool goat!” said the sheep from the ground below. “Why should I?” “You aren’t supposed to be on the roof,” said the sheep “You’re the fool. There’s no such thing as ‘supposed to.’” “Mark my words, the farmer will punish you for this.” “He’ll have to catch…
Prior to beginning my little series on farm parables, I made a video discussing the symbolism of the farm, as well as the symbolism of Prometheus, and how those too semiologies line up.
Let us examine the two most common types of thinking errors that occur within the human mind, as I have witnessed and experienced as a writer, critic, philosopher, and political commentator. These are errors not of argument (though they can cause poor argumentation), but in understanding. The first is the error of Addition, which is where one adds information to a set of data or facts. The second is the error of Ignorance¸ in which one ignores or down-plays information that is relevant to a subject or judgment. Of these two errors, ignorance is the one that has over the…
This video was a response to the following comment:
You are missing the opportunity cost. As an economist I have to tell you you might need to rethink your business model. A problem in all businesses with giving free samples or discounts is that you drown the market. There is a finite number of people in the world willing to buy an indi medieval fantasy, or japanese shogun historical fantasy. If you give out free copies of your product the first people to take those are the ones that have the highest demand for it. Its like a restaurant giving a wednesday discount because its the low day. But what happens is that all the fans of your restaurant that come saturday night and pay full price, come Wednesday to get the same food cheaper, and since they already ate once this week they wont come at your place on the weekend. I just published yesterday my first paper back yesterday, and ebook, and second publication are on the pipeline. Thank you David your videos helped a lot and kept me motivated to finish. all that said $500 is not cool. What I think is realistic is to get $500 from my first book in one year assuming i keep publishing all year long. How much did you pay for ISBN, Copy right, printing essentials, and all other small expenses? From a purely accounting point of view you might be at a loss, from an economical point of view you are down the equivalent of minimum wage hours dedicated into writing, editing, and everything else.
Production Aesthetics – 9/10 Tribal African inspired sets and costumes are eclectic, but effective, and always visually interesting. This film is superior in aesthetic value to the majority of superhero flicks, presenting things that are rooted in the familiar, yet unfamiliar, as opposed to Thor, which is much more fantastical compared to the Norse aesthetics that supposedly inspired it. Cinematography and Special Effects – 8/10 The special effects are generally very effective, but there are plenty of seams to be found within the impressive visuals, from odd-looking war rhinos to CG stuntmen that look more like dull plastic than…
