Adam Heine's Blog, page 41

How to Get Me to Unfollow your Twitter Feed

I know this is going to cause a swath of readers freaking out wondering, "Am I good enough? Will Adam unfollow me too?!" Because, of course, you're ALL worried about what I think of you. (That's how it is in my head, at least. Maybe I should see someone about that...).



Okay, so nobody's worried about my follow. But to avoid hurt feelings, I want to lay this disclaimer: I unfollow people rarely, and only when they define themselves by tweets like the ones below. If you do some of these someti...

How This Blog Works

At the risk of spoiling the magic, I thought some of you might benefit from knowing how I do things around here. Here goes.



THE SCHEDULE

A long time ago, I wrote posts whenever I thought of them, trying for a vague "once or twice a week." Now I post every Monday, Wednesday, Friday. I don't know if you guys care (because of Google Reader, and living 11-15 hours ahead of the US, I never know when people post), but it makes it easier for me to plan and to know I'm being consistent.



THE IDEA ...

When (and When Not) to Prologue

(Remix)



There are three things that make something a prologue:

It comes before the first chapter.
It is a part of the story (as opposed to an introduction, preface, or forward, which are about the story, but not part of it).
It says "Prologue" at the top.


Simple, right? That's what makes something a prologue instead of, say, "Chapter One," but it doesn't explain what makes a good prologue. That's what this post is about.



WHEN NOT TO PROLOGUE

A lot of writers use prologues as a band-a...

Time Travel for Writers

Technically, time travel is impossible, but as Isaac Asimov said, "I wouldn't want to give it up as a plot gimmick." Unfortunately, time travel has also been done A LOT, which leaves it open to accusations of cliche. It doesn't mean you can't do it (You can! Do!), but you need to know how it's been done and where your story fits into that (vast) collection.



MEANS OF TIME TRAVEL

Just because it's impossible doesn't mean you can't do it. Four common methods:

Faster-than-light travel. If you...

So You Want to be a Geek

Fine, nobody wants to be a geek, except those of us who are already geeks and need a way to feel proud about that (God bless you, Internet, for giving us that way!). But maybe you want to hang out with geeks? Understand what's going on at Comic Con? Date a geek?



Stop laughing. It happens.



Consider this an unofficial, non-exhaustive primer on the things you should know to understand the geek world...or at least to be able to visit our world without falling asleep or cringing all the time.



P...

Coming up with Chapter Titles

There is no wrong way to do chapters and chapter titles. Short titles. Long titles. Chapters titled with the name of the POV character. Excerpts of the chapter used as titles. Titles by date or location. Straightforward titles. Obscure titles. Numbers only. No titles (not even numbers). No chapters at all.



All of it has been done, and all of it can work. That makes everything I say here my opinion only. Ignore it as you will.



Think about what chapter titles are good for. Honestly, I thin...

7 Things You Never Wanted to Know

I have been coerced by the hilarious and talented K. Marie Criddle to tell you 7 things about myself. I'll understand if you stop reading the blog after this.



1)

I first beat Super Mario Bros. 2 on Wednesday, February 15, 1989. That's right, I KNOW THE DATE.



2)

The Care Bears Movie still creeps me out.



3)

I learned to play Bryan Adam's "Everything I Do" on the piano to impress girls. It worked once. We broke up 2 months later.



4)

I straighten things obsessively, especially board games. My...

The Power of Story

I sometimes come across the opinion that non-fiction is "useful" while fiction is purely for entertainment. For someone who loves to read, it can be hard to hear (especially when it's followed by an implication that what I write is not useful).



Ah, but it's not true. Non-fiction is certainly useful, just like a history textbook is useful, but it doesn't have the power of story.



Let's start with geography. I'm pretty good at it, but even I have trouble finding most countries in Africa. I can...

D&D vs. Fiction

One of my first novel attempts--which crapped out at 20,000 words and which you will never read--was a Dungeons & Dragons novel. I've been playing D&D and other games like it since 1989, and writing a novel was a natural extension of the worlds and characters I'd been making up all along.



But D&D does not necessarily make good fiction. It's sort of a running gag in the fantasy genre that you can tell which novels were really D&D games. This post is about why that is.



In D&D, there is no...

Writing Emotions

One recurring comment in my recent beta round of Air Pirates was to add more emotion. "How does he feel about this?" "Can there be some sort of emotional understanding here, not just an intellectualization of events?"



Turns out this is hard for me. I'm not a very emotional person. I don't really trust emotions, and I've spent large chunks of my life ignoring them. So now I find myself Googling things like "What does guilt feel like?"



I guess my transformation to android is complete.



But I'...