L.G. Estrella's Blog, page 44

Clarity and Brevity

One of the most common mistakes I see in high school students is a tendency to ramble when writing essays or other pieces of more formal writing. I don’t think this is on purpose. Rather, it stems from a lack of expertise and confidence. When someone doesn’t know how to properly express themselves or is not confident in their argument or understanding of a topic, it is not unusual for them to ‘pad’ their writing in a bid to make it seem more sophisticated while still leaving them room to mano...

Some Thoughts On Research

One of the more common questions I get is about how much research is required when you’re writing a story. As it so often is, the answer is that it depends.

If you’re writing about an area in which you’re already familiar, you probably won’t have to do all that much research. If I had to write a story that involved Roman history, I would likely be able to get away with simply refreshing myself a little since Roman history has been an interest of mine for almost as long as I’ve been able to re...

Laughing At Yourself

One of the lessons I found hardest to learn was learning to laugh at myself. When you are very close to a situation, it can be very hard to find the humour in it. However, there are times when finding the humour in what would otherwise be a very dire situation can be the only way to get through it.

I’ll give you an example.

When my knee decided to basically explode, an injury that ended up requiring surgery, I was understandably less than pleased about it. How could I be happy? I was going to...

Suitable Speech

The purpose of speech is communication. When we communicate with others, there are usually a number of things that we hope to achieve:

Provide information Sway them to our point of view Change their behaviour

However, communication is not a one way street. To communicate effectively, we need to consider not only ourselves but also the people we are communicating with. In particular, we need to be willing to modify our speech to better suit others.

Consider the following situation: you are t...

Happy New Year

Happy New Year.

I hope that the year ahead has only good things in store for you. I hope that if luck comes into play that the odds are always in your favour. I hope that wherever you are and wherever you go, fair winds and warm sunshine always find you. I hope that this year is exactly the sort of year you’re hoping for.

Happy New Year.

Merry Christmas

I’d just like to wish all of you a very Merry Christmas. I hope you all get exactly what you want for Christmas instead of a lump of coal… unless you happen to want a lump of coal.

Lift

“You look like you could use a lift.”

John Smith stared at the jolly fat man riding a reindeer. In a Santa costume. “Uh… what?”

The other man grinned. “I said you look like you could use a lift.” He nodded at the empty taxi stand. “I don’t think you’ll have much luck waiting here.”

John’s mouth opened and closed a few times before he finally managed to speak. “You do realise that you’re riding a reindeer, right?”

“Oh, yes.” The jolly man’s grin widened. “Nothing beats a good reindeer. You mig...

Favourite Authors

One of the questions I’m often asked is about my favourite authors. Although I’ve addressed this in the past, it might be worth going over it again since it’s been a while. I should also point out that I don’t have a favourite authors list, so much as I have a list of authors whose works I have enjoyed and whose works have deeply influenced me. The two tend to blur together a lot, so I’ve stopped trying to make the distinction. It’s also worth saying that just because I mention an author here...

How To Write Elite Fantasy Fiction

So you want to write fantasy fiction? How amusing. I’m sure that most of you would be content to simply write more of the run-of-the-mill dross that has begun to take over book stores all over the world. I’m here to make sure that doesn’t happen. I’m here to make sure that you don’t just write fantasy fiction, you write elite fantasy fiction.

That’s right. Elite. Fantasy. Fiction.

So pay attention, and I’ll try to keep this simple.

Rule #1 – Have a Heroic Hero

A lot of people will tell you th...

MTG Logic

One of the things my brother and I both find amusing about Magic: The Gathering is how creatures stack up against each other. One thing we like to do is to compare how many Grizzly Bears it would take to kill various other MTG entities in combat.

Here are some of the more amusing ones:

If you could somehow get 8 Grizzly Bears to fly (via catapult I suppose), then they could defeat Emrakul, an eldritch being of incalculable power. This begs the question of how the Eldrazi could possibly have d...