Genrewonk

S Andrew Swann | June 28, 2010

And our wonderful UPS guy decided to leave the package out in the rain, on top of a trash can next to the house. . .  But I got this to cheer me up.  Go there, you may win a book.

Category: blatant self-promotion, book covers, internet, photos, wolfbreed, writing | No Comments »
Tags: Author Stuff

S Andrew Swann | June 24, 2010

Authors of fiction have an advantage that we often don’t realize we have:  Our audience wants to believe us.  They know we’re lying, but in most cases they’re willing to accept anything we want sell them in the name of the story, and ask only that we’re honest about what the story is, and we [...]

Category: movies, writing | 1 Comment »
Tags: Author Stuff

S Andrew Swann | June 21, 2010

Back a couple of years ago I wrote about “Five Things Lost Can Teach Us About Storytelling” and I thought I’d add to that list now that the series is complete. Here’s a few more things I think Lost did well:

In writing a prolonged series, keep in mind how long your plot arc is: [...]

Category: TV, writing | No Comments »
Tags: Author Stuff

S Andrew Swann | June 14, 2010

There’s a marvelous post over at Io9 that you really must read.  It’s titled, “Inside the writers room: Top scifi TV writers reveal tricks of the trade,” but it really isn’t about genre writing, and it really isn’t about tricks of the trade. What it is, is an in-depth exploration on exactly what the [...]

Category: TV, internet, writing | No Comments »
Tags: Author Stuff

S Andrew Swann | June 13, 2010

If you’re a writer populating these here interwebs, and you don’t know about the site TV tropes, you should do yourself a favor and rectify that right now.  What is it?  It is a wiki that deals with, well, tropes in fiction: character types, situations, plot devices and so on.  And, despite the name, it [...]

Category: internet, science fiction, writing | No Comments »
Tags:

S Andrew Swann | June 9, 2010

Category: video | 1 Comment »
Tags:

S Andrew Swann | June 7, 2010

I go on about plot and worldbuilding a lot, because those are my strengths.  Both are similar in that they’re largely exercises in logic— taking a premise, either in the environment or the story itself, and just following the consequences to an inevitable conclusion. I tend to deal with most writing issues, from characterization [...]

Category: writing | No Comments »
Tags: Author Stuff

S Andrew Swann | June 2, 2010

I can see why a lot of people would hate it.  But then, again, there are certainly arguments for what they did end up doing.
Me, I teared up during the episode, had a bit of a WTF when Christian opened up his mouth at the end, and spent a good long time afterward thinking that [...]

Category: TV, science fiction, writing | 1 Comment »
Tags: Author Stuff