Samuel Fleming's Blog, page 8

So You Want to Write a Story (Series Intro)

So my wife got me thinking (as she often does): Why don’t I teach writing?

My replies were: I would rather write than teach writing. I’m not a successful writer by my standards (i.e. I am not making a full-time living from my writing and as of this post I am only making beer money). I don’t feel like I’m enough of an expert at craft to be able to teach it. 

I thought they were all fair points. She didn’t. 

There are plenty of people that you can help that are just starting out. 

But ...

So You Want to Write a Story Series (Intro)

So my wife got me thinking (as she often does): Why don’t I teach writing?

My replies were: I would rather write than teach writing. I’m not a successful writer by my standards (i.e. I am not making a full-time living from my writing and as of this post I am only making beer money). I don’t feel like I’m enough of an expert at craft to be able to teach it. 

I thought they were all fair points. She didn’t. 

There are plenty of people that you can help that are just starting out. 

But ...

Monthly Obscure Trope Series — Conservation of Ninjitsu

“In any martial arts fight, there is only a finite amount of ninjutsu available to each side in a given encounter. As a result, one Ninja is a deadly threat, but an army of them are cannon fodder.”

From the TvTropes page.

This is one of those tropes that I think is as well known and wide-spread as the Training Montage, but most people probably didn’t realize had a name.

You see the Conservation of Ninjitsu all the time in books and movies. The hero wades through countless mooks (henchme...

Leaving Kindle Unlimited and Going Wide

Blog posts are like books.  The initial idea usually requires a great deal of effort to condense and refine down—in this case, a little under 1,000 words. 

Initial Idea that spawned this post:  I am pulling my books out of Kindle Unlimited and publishing them “wide”.  

Smidge of background for non-publishing savvy:  Amazon has a monthly subscription service for books called Kindle Unlimited (hereon out referred to as KU).  It has benefits for both readers and for writers.  Namely, readers ...

Twenty Years of Schlock Mercenary

Schlock Mercenary finished in July of 2020 and I missed it.

Space seemed fitting

Let me back up.  

Rather than go into detail about the webcomic or about the cartoonist, this post is going to be a mix of my feelings on Schlock Mercenary, both as a fan and as a writer.  

For those of you who don’t know, Schlock Mercenary was a daily science fiction webcomic written by Howard Tayler. It was started back in June of 2000. The story follows Schlock, a carbosilicate amorph often mistaken f...

The Evolution of an Idea (Part 1) — Descent into Hell

Sometimes things have… strange beginnings.

In my younger years, I played around with a lot of story ideas. Some got half-written.  Others never made it out of brainstorming.  A lot got relegated to the drawer.

But some of those tucked away stories never quite go away.  Something about them keeps calling to us.  Like an itch you thought was gone.  

The first iteration of Descent into Hell was little more than a high schooler’s action fantasy.  The government opens up a portal to Hell...

Monthly Obscure Trope Series — Eldritch Location

There are haunted houses and then there are… well, then there’s everything else.  

Some of you might not be familiar with the word, eldritch. The Google definition is “weird and sinister or ghostly”.  But those of you who are familiar with the word know that the definition is just the surface.  TVTropes goes a bit further:  “The Alien. The Other. The Inconceivable. The [The type of thing] defined by its disregard for the natural laws of the universe as we understand them.”

When you say...

The Return of the Short Story and a New Monthly Serial Adventure

Sometimes you just want something short.

Fantasy books are getting longer.  I enjoy Epic fantasy, but sometimes I want something a little grittier, a little shorter, and something where the fate of the kingdom or the world isn’t at stake.  It’s a lot like when I’m trying to find a recipe and have to scroll through someone’s entire life story before I get to the directions.  

Cue Sword & Sorcery.  

I’m not going to give you a primer on the history of the S&S or what defines it as a g...

Originality vs Genre Expectations

Those of you in the writing and publishing community might have heard the phrase “Writing to Market.”  If you’re heard the phrase, you’re probably having one or two reactions:  Either you think it’s super smart or you think it’s selling out.  Most of the time, there doesn’t seem to be a lot of nuance to the argument.  

If you haven’t heard of “writing to market”, you may still have a strong reaction, because it sounds a lot like selling out.  It sounds a lot like being unoriginal, like follow...

Monthly Obscure Trope Series — More Dakka

What’s better than a gun going off and bullets flying?  

More guns?  More bullets?  A hail of bullets?  Yes.  

How does our hero stop a villain who has a gun?  

With more guns, of course!

Or as the Tv Tropes page says, “More Dakka is the art of solving problems by unloading as many rounds of ammunition at them as possible.”

This is another one of those tropes that you will recognize from movies, but probably didn’t realize had a name.  Sometimes it’s more guns.  Sometimes it’s...