Tag: Writing
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How to Level Up Your Bad Guys
Everybody loves main characters who grow into heroes. Over the length of a series, tested in fire and steel, they overcome their weaknesses, become even stronger and more capable, and become more than they are. Indeed, character growth is the foundation of shounen manga — readers want to see the hero grow from a zero to a…
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Writing the Prepared Professional
One of the reasons I love thrillers is the genre’s dedication to authenticity. Cops talk and act like cops, spec ops guys see the world much differently from ordinary people, and so on. The genre provides a dramatised window into the lifestyles and activities of these professionals, and how they see the world. Key to…
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Designing for Games vs Designing for Stories
A week ago, PulpRev author Jon Mollison wrote a Twitter thread about the role of clerics in Dungeons and Dragons. Among the key insights was this: Wrong. Clerics are a great #dnd class because they fill a proper function within the game – secondary brick with defensive tac support. Designing the class to reflect a literary archetype puts the…
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SHOT GIRL and the Perils of Going Full Political
The best stories tell truths disguised as entertaining lies. But when a story starts with a lie, there is little truth in it left. J. A. Konrath’s latest novel, SHOT GIRL, is the twelfth installment in his Jack Daniels series. Daniels, a retired cop confined to a wheelchair, spends her days in a rehabilitation facility…
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The Making of DUNGEON SAMURAI
DUNGEON SAMURAI was an experiment. In 2018, I enjoyed a moderate degree of success on Steemit. After earning a hefty chunk of change from publishing short fiction online, I decided I would take the plunge and publish a full-length fiction piece. A web serial, a modern-day incarnation of the serial pulp novels of the 1930s.…
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Book Unreview: 9th of August
One of the signatures of PulpRev is our cheerful disdain of conventional genre boundaries. Where traditional publishers see a dividing line between fantasy, science fiction, romance and other genres, we draw on the older traditions that blended various aesthetics to create exciting tales. We do not box ourselves in by arbitrary genre distinctions; we embrace…