“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…

Conflict – Defining and Building It in Your Fiction

I have written on conflict before. The focus there was on choreographing a fight, as well as understanding hand-to-hand and other types of combat as well as how it is applied, with the aim of making the action in a scene and story flow better. This is important for a writer to know if they…

Nice Guys Finish Last? Depends on One’s Definition of “Nice”

We have discussed Nice Girls, but what about Nice Guys? The standard response to that is: “Yeah, well, you know where Nice Guys finish – last.” Depending on the definition of “nice” in use, this can be quite true. But as with Nice Girls, Nice Guys do not all follow the perceived pattern of “nice”…

Songs from The Hobbit Performed in A Capella

I recently discovered some truly fantastic recordings of various songs from The Hobbit* and The Lord of the Rings.* Performed by Peter Hollens a capella, some of the songs regain the vigor of their original writing by Professor Tolkien. His version of “There’s an inn” benefits especially from this treatment, as Mr. Hollens and a…

Is It Camera Magic, or a Crucial Piece of Characterization?

By now, audiences are at least nominally acquainted with both Marvel Comics and the Marvel Cinematic Universe. The scene above, from Marvel’s The Avengers*, ought to be fairly familiar for that reason. Despite receiving less screen time than his fellow heroes, Hawkeye’s over-the-shoulder shot remains a memorable moment in the franchise. For most, this is…