The Wizard, the Well and the Unicolt will be available June 30th ONLY on Twitter.com
Follow @Wizard_Unicolt to be alerted when the book drops!
Until then, please enjoy these illustrations. (Click to enlarge.)
Illustration Gallery: The Wizard, the Well and the Unicolt
Z2.1 Protagonists: Ted Lasso Was Always Going to be a Loser
Okay, let me re-phrase: Ted Lasso, the character, and his lineup of misfit boys, were destined to lose the final game in the series’ first season. Not because he was a bad coach, or they a pack of losers. Not because Ted was an American football coach who knew absolutely nothing about soccer, or because he was set up to fail from the beginning. Not even because having them lose in Season 1 gives the series somewhere to go in the next season (though this is far closer to the answer than any of those other things).
Review: FIRST DATES, LAST CALLS by Alexandra Erin
Every SFF enthusiast should be reading Alexandra Erin (be it the abundant work offered on her website and news letter, her eclectic musings and commentary on Twitter, or in this book of excellent short stories). Erin's writing is incisive, fun, and empathetic. And more often than not, profound.
FIST DATES, LAST CALLS feels different from a lot of SFF fiction I've read. Not because it focuses less on life-and-limb danger, and deeds of daring do (though it does for the most part), but because its stories feel more like exploration than narrative. Traditionally, Speculative Fiction applies a 'what if' to reality, creating spaces for characters to have meaningful experiences. FDLC, however, skips the mediator and applies its 'what if's directly to the characters themselves. The experiences are no less meaningful, but they are drawn in terms of theme and emotion rather than setting or plot.
All good SFF fiction should make you think. And FDLC absolutely does. It also makes you care.
1.2: Goals, Obstacles, & Stakes
When building a cathedral, you cannot help but be aware of the components of what you’re making. Bricks, wood and glass. A heavy foundation. Loadbearing walls and pillars. Beams and arches designed to hold up more than just what’s above them. (Please keep in mind, I don’t actually know anything about cathedral construction.) But when you’re viewing a cathedral, walking through it, or around it, these aren’t the things you notice. What you see are its features. The nave and transept. Spires and buttresses. Stained-glass windows, bell towers and crypts.
In the previous post, we discussed the components of Story. Today, we’ll be looking at Story’s features. As with a cathedral (and again, I know VERY little about architecture), where components build the Story into what it is, its features define it in the minds of its readers.
So what are the features of a story then? Or to put it another way, what features do all stories share?
2.1: Protagonists
Here’s a question: What, exactly, is a PROTAGONIST?
Wing, that’s an easy one. “Protagonist” is just a word that means “main character”.
Okay, sure. I’m not going to split hairs with you here. “protagonist” means “main character”.
(Some argue otherwise, but it’s pretty telling, the only definitions for “main character” that are different from those given for “protagonist” come from people instructing on the difference; anyone simply defining terms—like a dictionary—uses them interchangeably.)
Book Review: The Revisionaries by A.R. Moxon
I don’t do a lot of reviews on this blog, but as I occasionally do my utmost to bore you with my thoughts on the craft of writing, and as this book is something of a masterclass in certain facets of that craft, I thought I’d offer my two pennies on how it struck me. So that being said…
Oh, man. What do I even say about this book? Whoof. How do I describe it?
…A.R. Moxon’s debut novel, The Revisionaries isn’t a time travel story, yet reading it is undoubtedly what it feels like to get hopelessly lost while travelling through time.
…A.R. Moxon’s debut novel, The Revisionaries is Infinite Jest, if Infinite Jest were actually good and had a compelling story.
…A.R. Moxon’s debut novel…
0.4: Defining Character
Here’s a writing question I’ve never heard asked:
What is a character?
Seems important. Every story has at least one; surely, we must have a clear understanding of what it is that makes a character a character. And what doesn’t. Surely, we know what characters do for our narratives. How else could we know what to do with them?
So then…what is a character?
0.3: Basic POV
POV PART 1: EXTERNAL POV
(Look Who’s Talking)
It’s important to have a good grasp of narrative Point of View (POV) when writing works of fiction.
Why ever would that be Wing?
Well, Imaginary Questioner, just as the narrator gives voice to your story, POV helps define that narrator’s voice. Shifting POV can dramatically change how a reader experiences the story.
Because of this, and because differences between POVs can be pretty damn subtle, the topic is a HUGE one, which will take us multiple posts to cover properly.
Today we’re going to be looking at what I like to call External POV.
Featured Art
WorldCon 2019 (Dublin)
Day Zero (The Day Before)
This year’s WorlCon is in Dublin, Ireland, seven time zones ahead of the part of the world I usually hang out in. I’m going.
Ahead of my trip, I took a calculated risk, hoping to beat the jet lag. In the days leading up to it, I’d wake earlier and earlier each morning, to put myself on Dublin time even before I left. As I said, it was a calculated risk, and I’m afraid somewhere, I must have forgotten to carry a two.
ONCE UPON A TIME IN HOLLYWOOD: As Brilliant as it is Shitty
TRIGGER WARNING: This post discusses both extreme physical and sexual violence.
SPOILER WARNING: Spoilers for Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, Inglorious Bastards and The Hateful Eight can be found below.
STORY: A one-time-big-time TV star finds his career in slow decline. He makes efforts to revitalize it, but obscurity’s momentum is strong. Then one day, him and his friend fight off and kill some random home-invaders. This catches the attention of a currently-big-time director who might just give our actor his second chance. THE END.
Art doesn’t exist in a vacuum. Romeo and Juliette only makes sense if you understand both internal family politics, and inter-tribal conflicts. Avengers Endgame only makes sense if you have an intricate understanding of the 10,000 interwoven MCU narratives that came before.
Context matters. Quintin Tarantino’s Once Upon a Time in Hollywood knows this. Once Upon a Time in Hollywood takes it a step further. Its story is that of the failing actor, the one I described a couple paragraphs back. Not much of a story at all. Not without context.
Featured Art
The Best Way to Travel
It occurs to me that I have a whole page on this website dedicated to chronicling “my travels”. (As if a world exists where anyone gives a shit where I go or what I do while I’m there.) Yet I take so few pictures touring about, that I never really have any content to add.
But hey, I’m a writer, ain’t I? Maybe I should write about it? Maybe? Okay, I’ll give it a shot. This entry will follow a recent trip I made to New York.
0.2 Eleven Types of Writing
What is writing?
I’m not trying to be philosophical here. I mean, actually. What is it? How do we define it? Obviously its a form of communication. Signifiers express meaning, either by representing sounds that combine into words, or in characterizing the words (or even meanings) all by themselves.
Simply put:
Shazam!: A Case for Kindess
Shazam! is good and fun and kind, and not lazy, and you should probably go watch it.
Die-hard Adam Wing fans will recall I used to run a different blog in which I pretty much only wrote long-winded and overly-wordy (and at times, rather shallow) movie reviews. Since starting this site, I’ve let that fall away, but I just came back from watching Shazam! and I wanted to write a few short words about it.
Lilo & Stitch: A Live-Blog
Lilo and Stitch is maybe my favorite Disney movie. And that’s counting Classic and New Disney, Disney/Pixar, Star Wars, Marvel, you name it. Maybe. Wall-e was pretty fantastic too.
So it’s really incredible how little I’ve thought about it in the past ten years. About four times, I’d say. Until about a month ago when it started popping up everywhere. I felt as if the Universe was telling me that it was time I gave it a good ol’ re-watch.
And I’ve been meaning to do another movie live-blog so…
Let’s Watch!
1.4 Character-Driven Story
Character-driven is a term we get a lot when talking about story—typically contrasted with plot-driven. Too often writers think character-driven narratives need to be plotless, that they consist only of deep explorations into internal lives, and unrealized emotions … where nothing actually happens. Such misconceptions can both hurt a writer’s work and turn readers from the very idea of character-driven stories.
February 2019 Featured Doodle
An H-Jon of Benjamins
For you see, that’s what you call a group of Benjamins. An H-Jon. Obviously.
How many can you count?
Check out more dumb art I made, here
0.1 Defining Art
Question:
How do we define art?
An ancient question, indeed. Explored by countless generations of scholars, philosophers and artists, debated on at length by fools and great minds alike. Still unresolved…
Until now.
Here, in the splashy ramblings of some nobody’s blog the answer will finally be revealed. So … that’s one thing taken care of. You’re welcome, Universe.
From Dusk Till Dawn (1996): A Live-Blog
A few weeks ago, I went to see the movie Overlord. Haven’t heard of it? Yeah, I don’t think many did. Pretty good. Maybe check it out when it hits Netflix. If you like action-horror at all.
The film begins as a fairly standard—relatable but not particularly powerful—WWII film. Partway through however, it transforms into a body-horror strewn monster movie. Usually such genre transformations found left to crappy B-splatter films, but since this was a Bad Robot production, I thought I’d give it a go.
As I said, pretty good.
One thing that stood out, was Overlord didn’t fetishize its transition between genres. It didn’t obsessively focus on it as the crux of the narrative; it was just the path it took. Which got me thinking. A lot of movies really do hyper-focus on one specific piece of their structure. Or an aspect of one of their characters. Or another specific element that is highlighted as important beyond all else. The best word I can think to describe this is: fetishization.
I think there’s a lot to talk about in how we fetishize elements of the stories we both tell and consume. I decided I’d like to explore this in a post one day. But not today. Then I thought I’d do a comparison between Overlord and the 1996 film From Dusk Till Dawn, which shares this two-part structure but absolutely does fetishize the transition.
So I re-watched From Dusk Till Dawn.
THEN I decided, instead of a dry old compare-and-contrast, it would be much funner, just to live-blog the movie.
So that’s what I did.