Robyn Paterson's Blog, page 28
June 27, 2014
Weekend Listening- The Piano Guys
Musical geeks are the most entertaining geeks, because they find ways to combine their musical talents with their geeky hobbies in fun ways. Case in point- The Piano Guys, who use a variety of instruments (but mostly pianos) to produce fun and creative music videos.
June 24, 2014
Wengu- Chinese Classics and Translations
Today, while searching for a collection of the poems of the Chinese master poet Li Bai (aka Li Po) I stumbled across a marvelous website called Wengu Zhixin, which is a site collecting translations of Chinese classic philosophy and thought into English and French. They have the usual documents like The Analects of Confucius, The Yi Ching, and Lao Tzu’s The Way and Its Power (the core book of Daoism), but they also have a great collection of Tang Dynasty Poems (with actual good quality transla...
June 21, 2014
Everybody was Star Wars Fighting! Moves for Jedi Combat.
Comic artistPere Pérez took it upon himself to design actual combat moves for jedi, and the results are awesome. Below is two of the eight very logical fighting moves he came up with to make use of both the special qualities of The Force and the Lightsabre’s ability to turn on and off at will.
You can find the rest here.
Rob
June 20, 2014
The Vengeance Factor
If you asked me what my favorite episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation was while it was on the air, the answer was simple: Tin Man. It had everything that made Star Trek great, and a lot of starship action that I loved when I was a bit younger. However, if you ask me what episode has stuck with me the most from ST:TNG’s seven seasons, that answer is actually episode 3X09- The Vengeance Factor.
I’m not sure why this episode is the one that’s stuck with me, maybe it’s the bittersweet romanti...
June 19, 2014
The Stories of Ken Liu
One of the hottest names in Science Fiction today is Ken Liu, a Chinese-American programmer, lawyer and writer who seems to jump into everything he does with heart and amazing dedication. He has won the Nebula, Hugo and World Fantasy awards more than once for his short fiction, and recently announced he’s going into Epic Fantasy with his debut novel The Grace of Kings due out next year from Simon and Schuster’s new genre fiction imprint Saga Press. He’s a rising star who blends both Asian and...
June 18, 2014
Helping Writers Become Authors
There are a few writers out there for whom the act of structuring and planning a novel is as much joy and fun as the writing of the story itself-K.M. Weiland is one of those writers.She has turned her love of structure and the writer’s craft into not only a blog, but also a video series on YouTube, a podcast and severalbooks, all of them deeply focused on how to make writers produce better work by discussing the many components of a story in great detail. It’s actually quite impressive how sh...
June 17, 2014
Epic Rap Battles- Sir Isaac Newton (Weird Al) vs Bill Nye
Probably the best one they’ve done in a while! They might be getting their stride back!
June 16, 2014
Pulp Adventure Generator
I stumbled across this the other day, and it’s just too cool not to share!
Grab your 10-sided dice, because someone has turned Lester Dent’s classic Pulp Adventure Writing Formula into a full-on Pulp Adventure Generator for use with any role-playing game or in your own writing.
The above is a sample of the 9-page document, which is for sale here for $1.99, but you can find a free preview of the whole thing here. Grab your fedora’s and get to kicking some Nazi butt!
Rob
June 15, 2014
How to Write a Murderously Good Mystery
On her excellent writer’s blog, writer Karen Woodward has written and put together a fantastic collection of articles on writing mysteries that anyone wanting to move into the genre should definitely check out. She covers setting, victims, making sufficiently intriguing murders, and even delves into the techniques used by Agatha Christie in order to explore how to write the perfect mystery story. Check it out!And while you’re there, read some of her other excellent articles on writing as well...
June 14, 2014
Plotting Thread
As I discussed in Prepping Your Novel, there are a vast number of different ways you can go about plotting a story. Currently in the Writer’s Cafe on Kboards (the un-official Kindle discussion forum) there’s a discussion going where different writers are sharing their approaches to plotting their novels. And you know what? Almost every one of them is using a different method, and one that works for them.
These run from:
Writer Nicolas Andrew’s very traditional approach:
My outlines are rarely fi...
