Matthew Woodring Stover's Blog, page 9

Lunatic Fringe, I Know You're Out There

I'd just like to take a moment to thank some of the most, uh, enthusiastic opponents of the health care legislation, for making everyone who agrees with you cringe.

After Health Vote, Threats on Democrats

Nice job injecting just a bit more violence into American politics. Idiots.

This might be an opportunity for the hard right to clean house a little bit . . . maybe Rush Limbaugh can denounce this behavior. Or Glen Beck . . .

Oh, wait. This is where they're going to claim that it's a conspiracy o...

Just Wonderin' . . .

I try to stay away from politics on this site, but something occurred to me as I watched President Obama sign the health care reform legislation.

There's been a lot of yammer by the chattering class about these teabagging right-wingnuts (uh, sorry, principled small-government conservatives) who supposedly swore they'd emigrate if this legislation became law. So I've got this three-part question:

First, does anyone actually know someone who made that pledge? (As opposed to going on third-hand...

And from the University of Iowa . . .

Hey. Too busy with Caine for a long post today, so I'm including a bit of mail that just tickles the crap out of me . . .

As per your request, here's the run-down of what happened this morning when I presented "Br`er Robert" to my Fic Writing class.
The presentation/discussion is meant to focus on Craft aspects of the story, so all of my prompting/questioning was aimed in that general direction.
I...

As Tony Stark once said: Oh yeah, I can fly.

So this morning, I did something unusual in my Five Fingers Sprints: I actually sprinted.

For proper context: I was fast as a kid. Usually the fastest kid in the class, up until I was about twelve or so, after which I generally avoided exercise. Since then, I have done occasional distance running, building up to running a couple of marathons in the 90s. In the process of training for those marathons, though, I destroyed whatever sprinting ability I had. The way Clydesdale-class distance...

Never Throw Your Last Knife II: Caine on blade combat.

Never throw your last knife.

A knife is not a little sword. A knife is a sharp fist.

Knives are not for fighting. Knives are for killing people who don't know you have knives.

If somebody comes at you with a knife, keep something large between yourself and the blade. A chair works. So does the body of the knife guy's friend. Best of all is a loaded gun.

The most dangerous weapon in the hands of an untrained attacker is a butcher knife. A sword requires strength and technique. A firearm requires...

Put Up Yer Dukes, Pilgrim. SRW #4

As promised, some technical details on the construction and depiction of something a lot of people tell me I'm good at: the fight scene.

Actually, what I'm going to talk about is the construction of the Scene more broadly; the Fight Scene is only a specialized version. What makes a good fight scene  is what makes a good scene, and the reverse. This means I'll be starting with fundamentals, so people who've done assloads of creative writing classes may want to skip ahead.

The word "scene" comes ...

We Have a Winner! Final Score: Matt–20, Winter–Fuck this for a joke, I'm outa this one-hole craphouse. And furthermore, screw you and the shoes you ran in on.

That.

Over 60 running miles, and several times that in walking miles. No knee pain. No hip pain. No foot pain. And I've lost five pounds.

Ladies and Gentlemen and Fungi: I present the VIBRAM FIVE-FINGERS SPRINT! Give it up for the spunky little foot-gloves that have made all this possible!

We Have a Winner! Final Score: Matt–20, Winter–Fuck this for a joke, I'm outa this one-hole craphouse. And furthermore, screw you and the shoes you're wearing.

That.

Over 60 running miles, and several times that in walking miles. No knee pain. No hip pain. No foot pain. And I've lost five pounds.

Ladies and Gentlemen and Fungi: I present the VIBRAM FIVE-FINGERS SPRINT! Give it up for the spunky little foot-gloves that have made all this possible!

Never Throw Your Last Knife: Caine's Rules of Personal Combat

In response to a couple of queries on the techniques of writing fight scenes, I have broken the answer into two distinct categories. The technical aspects of the narrative presentation of fighting will be found in the next SWR post; for the In-Universe Depiction of personal combat, I will defer to an acknowledged expert.

Standard Disclaimer: The opinions and beliefs below are those of Hari Michaelson/Caine/Jonathan Fist/Dominic Shade alone, and do not necessarily reflect those of the...

Stover's Rules of Writing #3

In response to Guy's question on back-story: When in doubt, see Rule #1a.

Which I know is a non-answer, so let's dig in here a bit.

Iron Dawn was written with a detailed outline that I had to scrap halfway through because I discovered an unseen idiot block in the plot. Jericho Moon was also written with a detailed outline that was scrapped halfway through, because I discovered that as plotted, Barra, Leucas and Kheperu would never actually interact with Joshua himself, which simply will not...