Tag: Writing
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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…
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Isekai is not Japanese Europe in a Video Game
Isekai stories are a staple of modern Japanese fiction. Featuring humans from modern-day Japan transported to another world, it seems there’s a new isekai story published every month. Today, isekai stories are extremely popular. And they are becoming extremely ridiculous. The discerning reader will find much to complain about. Fanservice in place of character development.…
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The Way of the Pulps
A few days ago, I had the privilege of reading the synopsis of a trilogy being written by a fellow Singaporean. It was an honest-to-goodness Sword and Planet story, like Star Wars crossed with Final Fantasy. Holy warrior maidens, mind-altering magics, political intrigue, interstellar travel and warfare, it was like reading a revival of an…