Let's Talk About Size

SPAN - a Science Fiction Film

SPAN is a science fiction film seeking funding via Kickstarter. Interesting...

Prophets of Science Fiction

Writing Excuses: Endings

I'm back on episode 6:20 of Writing Excuses to talk about "Endings." They describe the episode thusly:

Lou Anders joins Dan, Howard, and Mary for a discussion of endings. We begin by talking about how important it is to “stick your landing” at the end of the book, and then recap the Hollywood Formula to point out how endings work there. We get examples from Mary’s upcoming novel Glamour in Glass, Dan’s upcoming novel Partials, Howard’s work-in-progress short story, and Lou Anders’ award-worthy, dot-matrix printer.

Female Armor Sucks

Dragon Age: Redemption

The first episode of The Guild creator Felicia Day's Dragon Age: Redemption is up. I've been very curious about this series in particular and non-TV "television" in general for a while.

R.I.P. Steve Jobs

“Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.” Steve Jobs

Writing Excuses: The Screenwriting Formula

I'm a guest on episode 6:18 of the marvelous Writing Excuses podcast, talking about "the Hollywood Formula." They write of this episode:

Lou Anders, Hugo-winning editorial director from Pyr books, joins Mary, Dan, and Howard at Dragon*Con for a discussion of the Hollywood Formula. Lou shared this with Mary originally, and she used it to tighten up some of her work. It’s useful enough that we decided to invite Lou onto the ‘cast to share it with everybody else, too.

The formula centers around three characters – the protagonist, the antagonist, and the relationship character. Lou explains how these terms have, in this formula, different meanings than we might be accustomed to.

Among the things that we learn: The Dark Knight has an antagonist none of us could guess, Die Hard and Stargate are third-act movies, and Howard is criminally ignorant of classic cinema.