Writing Shade (Contains spoilers)

Psychopathic traits for writers creating villains
Writing Shade (Contains spoilers)

2

This is just a short post on something I recently stumbled across. In my research to create just the right villain I found myself watching the following fascinating documentary about psychopaths: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J3ZihT9lVbA Made by the BBC it discussed the characteristics of psychopathy. As a writer, one of the key things that came out of this for me was the checklist of characteristics common to psychopaths. This checklist of traits provides

Using an anthology submission to build a villain's backstory
Writing Shade (Contains spoilers)

5

Truth be told, my compulsive pedantic nature is impacting my novel writing. I feel the need to fully explore and understand the backgrounds of my characters. Now I know that a lot of writing methodologies say that this is a good thing, but it so slows me down. As a result I ask myself “how can I turn this into a positive?” Enter magazines and anthologies. I stumbled across a call for submissions

A documentary that influenced my fantasy writing - Slumming it
Writing Shade (Contains spoilers)

‘Slumming It’ is a documentary by Kevin McCloud whereby McCloud visits the slum of Dharavi in Mumbai, India. Here he finds a world that is so different to that which Westerners (like myself) experience. The children play among filth near toxic drains, Pollution is everywhere. Poverty is everywhere. Surely this must be soul crushing for the inhabitants. And yet there is a richness of spirit that is fascinating to watch.

What I want in a Villain & The Curse of the Bad Chapter
Writing Shade (Contains spoilers)

  This is two blog posts for the price of one as I have been dwelling on both of these things. The first is finding the villain that I find perfect for the novel. Yes sure, I’ve already named and described him in the first draft. But I really need to tease him out more. So I have been watching films and documentaries of actors who are known for characterisations

Writing my own gestalt-sentient beings
Magic, science and the arcane

In the mid-1990s I read a book with an idea that captured my imagination. In Verner Vinge’s “A Fire Upon the Deep” I read of a canine gestalt-sentient species called the Tine. A gestalt-sentient species, as portrayed in that novel, was one that had a sort of group mind or group consciousness. So an “individual” might be made up of five or six beings who shared a consciousness. What really

Quantum entanglement & Sympathetic magic
Magic, science and the arcane

Well, as any of my dear friends out there know, I am trying to create a world in which magic is merely science that is forgotten. I know, not a new idea. But I am trying to express it in a way that is true to most reader’s expectations of fantasy while providing a rationale that satisfies my own need for logic and consistency. Anyway, I’ll write more about that