I’m sure there are plenty of books about it and several AIs are standing by ready to answer the question, but that’s not helpful for internalizing it. Somewhere in all these writing posts, I’m sure I’ve mentioned this before, but I realized something years ago: All my favorite TV shows are layered. There’s a showContinue reading “What is Plot?”
Category Archives: Writing
Feeding the Dungeon
I need to toss some people into the dungeon to feed it. The dungeon doesn’t care who but our intrepid heroes do. That means I need a couple/few bad guys. There are plenty of places around to find them. An obvious possibility: People in jail (for something serious, of course). There are problems with that.Continue reading “Feeding the Dungeon”
Balance of Power
LitRPG universes generally survive due to Mutually Assured Destruction. When you’ve got people – and “not that many” is literally billions in a multiverse of any size – who can sterilize planets and blow up stars, something needs to keep them in check. The answer is usually “a coalition will gang up on you andContinue reading “Balance of Power”
Agency
One of my pet peeves with humans is that they deny each other agency. The “I’m not going to tell her to protect her” trope is ridiculously common in fiction and it’s not uncommon in real life. Everyone has agency. They should be allowed to make their own decisions, even (or perhaps “especially”) if IContinue reading “Agency”
Warriors vs Armies
Armies tend to win, if you are not aware. This is a common LitRPG problem. There are two equally common solutions. First, is that is that groups don’t fight down-grade. If a bunch of F-grades (our werewolves’ grade) get in a fight, the faction doesn’t send in C-grades to squash them. One let’s the kidsContinue reading “Warriors vs Armies”
On the One Paw
Werewolves will make decisions differently. Instead of the human binary “on the one hand, on the other hand”, they default to four options. One per paw, obviously. This is not an immediate thing. It’s a societal impact thing. Consider humans with prehensile tails: There would have always been a third option. What decisions would haveContinue reading “On the One Paw”
No Plot
I wondered if it would come up. It did. There is no plot in the first half of the book. This is not exactly by-design, but it’s not accidental, either. There is a “theme”, but that’s not the same thing. Our intrepid heroes don’t have a goal. They’re not intrepid heroes, yet. They’re just twoContinue reading “No Plot”
Axis Orientation
I’ve found it useful to envision human behavior as set of rotated normal curves. Pick some attribute and incorrectly assume a normal distribution of it. Now spin that curve around its peak. You get a normal “mound”. Each individual attribute is its own curve. The mound is all of them together. We’re each a pointContinue reading “Axis Orientation”
Chapter 18 Shall Submit
That’s the weekend goal. It need four scenes. Updated with what actually happened. Done. Some monster needs to be killed, hacked into bits, and the best parts brought back for dinner. That sentence, with “ZZZ” in front of it, is all there is. Most of the monsters have been mutated existing things. Maybe it’s timeContinue reading “Chapter 18 Shall Submit”
Evening Narrator Hunting
The narrator can be difficult to spot in the crepuscular gloaming. There is a point to this, two actually: To list the one’s that I’ve caught and to justify what I leave behind. I’m not necessarily “right”, but I will have a reason. …let’s get back to the lodge, eat something, then we can figureContinue reading “Evening Narrator Hunting”
