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  • Hello Predator—Meet Prey! You'll get along famously

    [CENTER][MEDIA=youtube]dK80v17Fkcw[/MEDIA][/CENTER] Finally I've found a good and fairly comprehensive video on this subject, something I've tried many times to elaborate on throughout this blog. [B][I]Iain McGilchrist[/I][/B] seems to be just about the only scientist concentrating on this subject today, aside from some low-key research groups doing studies nobody ever hears about (unless they look into McGilchrist's work). He's its popularizer, the way [B][I]Carl Sagan[/I][/B] and [B][I]Neil DeGrass Tyson[/I][/B] are for astrophysics and science in general. Several times I've explained...
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  • A Phantom for My Opera?

    Some days when I doubt myself and my abilities to write I think of employing a ghost writer. But in a bit of a different setup. I will write the first draft and then the potential ghost writer can refine it to a readable/enjoyable state. I love storytelling, and I love the creative process. But my produce just isn't up to par most of the time. Training is like trying to teach an old dog new tricks. I read, I watch, I practice... I learn? Yeah, sometimes I do learn. But I will continue to try my best. So no, I will not employ a phantom for my space opera. I will be the author of my own...
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  • The Desperate Search for a New Idea...

    I think I have it... Not a truly different idea in that it's completely unheard of on any level.. But I had quit story-telling for a while because I couldn't think of something genuinely new and interesting. Different in terms of style, structure, and idea. As a fiction writer...I tend to want to [I]create [/I]something. To flex my imagination rather than offering stylistic renditions of the same types of stories. Only problem is...I think I will never complete it in time. I know...cryptic. Useless...but this is more a time-stamp for myself. Maybe, in time, someone will look back on...
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  • Time, time, time

    On our neighborhood walks my wife and I used to walk past a big old deciduous tree (as I recall, though it may have been a pine). A couple years back, though, it dropped its biggest branch and some others in a storm, and the property owners had it removed. All of it, stump and all. This year when we walked past that spot, there is absolutely no indication that the tree was ever there. Once the next generation of property owners move in, no one will recall that tree. It existed, but now it's totally gone. When we moved into our house more than 20 years back, a semi-retired surgeon and...
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  1. Blue Horizons

    What's Anime to me anyway?

    [​IMG] ​
    I've always loved animation. I don't know why, but I favoured it over live-action based movies since basically forever. My earliest memory of it is in the very early 2000s, when my Dad had a TV box that included a channel named "Jetix", which broadcasted animated shows. I don't know much about the logistics, but it is an American channel, and it did exist in Greece where I grew up. In fact, many of the shows were officially...
    By ps102 · Aug 26, 2023 · 512 · 2
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  2. Shaded Secrets Sneak-Peeks

    Sneaking Suspicions- Meet The Protagonists!

    Hey everybody! Here with a [very late] protagonist introduction for Sneaking Suspicions. As some of you may already know, Sneaking Suspicions has three main characters, and here are their profiles:


    Protag #1: Wavepaw...
    By Dewey · Aug 17, 2023 · 401
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  3. Steaming Mess-O-Xoic

    My Relationship with Nature

    Discovering Mary Oliver has brought some changes. I've always liked the Transcendentalist poets, but find their poetry sometimes difficult, and I feel very removed from them, since they lived in an earlier era, and were all long-dead when I first walked the earth. But Mary Oliver is a modern Transcendentalist, and also a powerful link to the earlier ones. She helps me understand their writing, their ideas, and their lives, and better connects me to them in ways I...
    By Xoic · Aug 15, 2023 · 1.2K · 30
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  4. Steaming Mess-O-Xoic

    Short Story Structure

    A companion piece to my last entry. Some time ago there was a thread about short story structure where many of us posted links to some great info. It's a shame for it to be lost in the WF vaults, so here's a link to it:
    By Xoic · Aug 13, 2023 · 455
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  5. Steaming Mess-O-Xoic

    Different types of novels and novellas, according to John Gardner

    Last night in John Gardner's Art of Fiction, I ran across several different forms for novels and novellas, and I want to get the info down here.

    I'll start by linking to several articles I'll be looking up on these types:
    • 'Energeic' novels
      • Aristotle's approach, three-act structure etc
    • Juxtapositional novels
    • Lyrical novels
      • With an element of musical rhythm and repetition in the structure and/or the prose...
    By Xoic · Aug 11, 2023 · 1K · 20
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  6. Steaming Mess-O-Xoic

    List of story types with word counts

    I keep needing to look this up, so I'm putting it right here where I can always find it.
    • Flash: under 500 (sometimes under 1,000)
    • Short: Normally considered 5,000 to 10,000, but can be anything over 1,000
    • Novelette: 7,500 to 17,500
    • Novella: 17,500 to 40,000
    • Novel: 40,000 to 110,000 at the extreme ends, with 50,000 to 100,000 being more the norm
    By Xoic · Aug 5, 2023 · 399
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  7. Steaming Mess-O-Xoic

    Plot driven / Character driven, and a hybrid of the two

    Last night I was introduced to the idea that plot-driven and character-driven don't need to be a binary proposition, you can mix-and-match 'em, or hybridize 'em. That's the first time I recall seeing this idea, and it immediately struck me as true. Several times before I've made similar discoveries, that ideas writers often take as binary propositions actually work better on a sliding scale, a spectrum. Just as dark and light don't necessarily mean only intense blinding white light or...
    By Xoic · Jul 29, 2023 · 1.2K · 19
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  8. Steaming Mess-O-Xoic

    A few really good articles on Deep/Close POV

    By Xoic · Jul 9, 2023 · 575 · 4
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  9. Steaming Mess-O-Xoic

    Geekin' out on poetry (and Romanticism)—my study thread

    Wherein Xoic attempts to edumacate himself in things poetical (and Romantical)
    By Xoic · Jul 1, 2023 · 4.4K · 164
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  10. Reflections on My Golden River

    Hard to Explain

    Describing a dream, no matter how moving to the teller, invariably brings feigned interest and stifled yawns from the most patiently listening audience. The magic of the dream, its spell, cannot be captured in the outside world; it comes from deep within the dreamer. Vivid imagery and intense emotion can't be easily, if at all, captured by words and the logic of telling.

    It's the same with my recent sojourn back to western Nebraska. Most people have no idea of what that landscape is...
    By GrahamLewis · Jun 24, 2023 · 324
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  11. Steaming Mess-O-Xoic

    Aphantasia

    By Xoic · Jun 23, 2023 · 360
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  12. Steaming Mess-O-Xoic

    Character Web


    ​
    I didn't post this video because it's about The Walking Dead. I never really cared much for that show. Watched a few episodes, then lost interest pretty fast. Maybe because there's no identifiable theme? I don't know.

    I posted the video because it's about Character Web and how to go about creating one. Each character should have a particular stance on the main theme, or possibly a secondary theme for some of them. Otherwise...
    By Xoic · Jun 18, 2023 · 854 · 3
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  13. Steaming Mess-O-Xoic

    Free Indirect Discourse

    Not only does the name sound cool, but it's an important tool that ties in with my earlier posts about direct and indirect writing.

    What is it? I'll quote:

    "Free indirect discourse is a method of conveying a character’s internal thoughts...​
    By Xoic · Jun 14, 2023 · 570 · 3
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  14. Reflections on My Golden River

    Cue the Eerie Music

    While reading cultural anthropologist Loren Eisely's autobiography, All the Strange Hours, a book that had mysteriously appeared on my bookshelf years after I thought I had given it away or lost it I came upon this entry:

    "In the year 1975 twenty-one people died in a air crash at the Mayan religious center of Tikal in Guatemala. Strange, is it not, that twenty-one tourists born over a thousand years after the fall of the Mayan Empire, and only aware of it because of the...
    By GrahamLewis · Jun 13, 2023 · 388
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  15. I Dwell in Possibility

    Awakening

    Awakening

    I don’t know where I came from, and I don’t know where I’m going when I die. But for this brief interlude, I am here. My body is my home. I have a sense of home in myself. Each day brings new learning. I awaken to being wrong, I awaken to being right, I awaken to dawning truths I had never considered.

    In sleep, there are limits. Blind spots in our perception. How can you answer the question – What if? – if your senses are not on alert, if you are not fully awake?...
    By Louanne Learning · Jun 5, 2023 · 515 · 3
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