Serdar Yegulalp's Blog, page 124

Me And One Other Fool

Who's really worth pleasing when you're writing? (And why?)

From Monstrosity To Tragedy

Art isn't profound just because it hurts.

Feed Me, See More

Our site's feeds got munged. Look within for answers.

But What If The Moment Sucks?

On the problems inherent in "living in the moment".

The Long And Winding Checklist

On using (and abusing) the rewrite process's "things to do" list.

The Empire's New Tools

New tools for publishing on Kindle are a major step forward.

Action And Reaction And We-action

On not second-guessing audience responses to your work (again).

Changing It Up

Take a book that's not SF. Imagine it as SF. What would it be like?

It's About A Lot Of Things Dept.

Matthew Buscemi had a great point in the comments:

... even when a storyteller gets past conceptualizing their novels as strings of plot, trying for something more is still a dicey proposition. I think the "complex yet incoherent" problem would manifest itself in the form of filling in the blank with a complex string of ideas, e.g., "My story is about love and life and art and the natural world and how people can drift apart and then back together, ..." and so on.

Confession: I laughed when...

Two Ways To Blow It Dept.

A Writer's View: The Best Is Both - Steven Savage

Meaningless yet complex stories are ones where there���s no simplicity, everything is about and is presented as some giant mess that becomes unrelatable, often as there���s no hook or way to get into it. ��If you can���t sum up a part of a tale simply it may really be just a pile of stuff, only complex as you���re playing conceptual Jenga.

Simple and shallow stories where there are hooks, but little depth. ��There���s little connection or mea...