“Just a Story” and Malicious Storytelling

Over at Helping Writers Become Authors, K.M. Weiland offers a very good treatise on why stories aren’t “just” stories. She posits that they serve four functions: life, a “map” of human consciousness, mirrors of reality, and a force for subliminal communication. That is, the subtext of a story sticks with a reader or viewer because…

Strong Men in Fiction

I have written a fair bit on strong women mostly because that is the more obvious of the two battlefields in fiction. But the dearth of capable, competent, and confident male leads is beginning to tell in a manner no one can now ignore. As a writer interested in portraying characters who are capable and…

Killing Characters, Part 1: Is It Necessary to Make a Novel/Series Believable?

This article is the first in a three part series dealing with the demise of characters in fiction. One of the main literary movements of the last century, Realism, holds much of the modern literati in its thrall. Along with Naturalism and a resurgent Romanticism, this school of writing insists on killing off at least…

In Defense of Happy Endings – Are They Unreal, or Are They the Ultimate Reality?

Alex over at Amatopia published a very interesting article a month or so ago. In it, he made mention of a topic that has occupied my mind on and off for several years: the modern conception of happy endings in fiction. In his piece, Alex rightly points out how finales where the heroes and heroines…

Cultured Characters – Why More Heroes Should Quote the Classics

The Conscience of the King Can anyone reading this article name a science fiction character – one who is not Star Trek’s Spock or the X-Men’s Beast – who enjoys quoting great poets and philosophers? I am speaking of popular sci-fi heroes known to the general public here; I am acquainted with other characters in…