Protagonists

The next article in my writing series is up on Radish. This one covers protagonists. Check it out here and get the cheat sheet above. And don't forget to like and share!

Character in Modern Storytelling

In which our hero defines characterization and lays out the rules...

Also another cheat sheet. As usual, the article is over on the Radish blog, here.

Thanks for reading! I'll be back next week with a write-up on main characters.

Interior Monologue, Soliloquy, and Stream of Consciousness

Hey all! Here's another cheat sheet. You can read the full article about interior monologue here. However, I did not cover the two less common ways to show characters' thoughts in that article: soliloquy and stream of consciousness. I'll dive into them in an episode of my upcoming podcast The Writer's Guide to the Galaxy, which will be launching in the next few weeks, but for now, here's a quick and dirty explanation:

Soliloquy is generally only used in plays. It is where a character speaks his thoughts aloud so the audience may hear them. E.g., Hamlet's famous "To be or not to be..." speech.

Stream of consciousness is really just a different type of interior monologue. You can think of it like unrefined and unfiltered consciousness as compared to the refinement and filtering that goes into crafting the more normal interior monologue.

And that's all for now, see you next week for Characterization!

Tense?

And now for tenses. Here's a quick cheat sheet for which tenses to use in what situation. You can see my full article on the basics over here, and I'll dive even more into tenses in an episode of my upcoming podcast Writer's Guide to the Galaxy. Stay tuned!

A Radish Point of View...

Here's the next article in my writing series. This time I'm talking about Point of View (PoV). Grab the cheat sheet above and check out the article here.

Dialog with (a) Radish

EDIT: Added the dialog tag cheat sheet.

Sorry, folks, I've been AWOL for a couple months working on lots of cool things. And I'm not returning empty handed. Here's the first in an ongoing series of writing articles I've been preparing for our friends over at Radish. This one covers my basic rules on writing dialog tags. Check it out here.

Here's a cheat sheet for dialog tags. Enjoy!

Why "The Force Awakens" Was a Terrible Star Wars Movie (Continued) -The State of the Galaxy Part 2 *SPOILERS*

Ok, here's the bar fight I promised. If you missed the first part, you may want to read it first.

Anyway, to further illustrate the problem of confusion, I'm going extrapolate two scenarios. As bar fights. Because I love analogies.

Why "The Force Awakens" Was a Terrible Star Wars Movie (Continued) -The State of the Galaxy Part 1 *SPOILERS*

Before I dive into the deep end of setting here, I want to reiterate that I really enjoyed the movie just like the vast majority of fans out there. However, almost everyone that I've talked to about the movie felt that something was off. I've written these posts to illustrate why the new movie didn't "recapture the magic" of the original, why it didn't feel like Star Wars, and to help my fellow storytellers make informed decisions when crafting their own stories.

If you missed my first post about "The Force Awakens" and would like a quick overview, you can find it here.

I swear that I fully intended for this to only be one post. But setting is just so important, and I really really wanted to give you guys a bar fight. So you get this one today and the bar fight on Friday.

Now that that's all out of the way, time to jump into The Setting.

Why "The Force Awakens" Was a Terrible Star Wars Movie *SPOILERS*

Ever since the new Star Wars movie came out, I've been having the same discussion over and over again. Everyone loves the new Star Wars movie, but something is off/missing/wrong/not quite right. As an editor, I spend most of my time figuring out all the things that are off/missing/wrong/not quite right with stories. So if you feel the same way about the new movie, read on to see why. There's a lot here, so I'll give you an overview, and if you want the analysis, just look for my subsequent posts over the next couple weeks.