Kit Sun Cheah

Tag: Writing

  • 12 Strong and the Choice Between Drama and Realism

    12 Strong is everything you expect from a Hollywood movie about the American military machine. Featuring tough-talking soldiers, rugged wind-swept valleys and mountains, and enough explosions and gunfire for a small war, 12 Strong accomplishes what it set out to do: honour the first American Special Forces troops in Afghanistan. Just don’t treat it as a ‘true story’.…

  • How Poor Worldbuilding Destroyed Talentless Nana

    The more fantastic a story, the greater the need for justification. To write a technothriller about a covert ops team hunting down terrorists, all you have to do is say that the government created new counterterrorist organisation with the best training and technology to pursue evildoers, and a reader will happily lap it up. But…

  • What Do Otaku Readers Really Want?

    The Japanese publishing industry is getting predictable. Every other week, there’s a brand new series starring a Japanese high schooler who is mysteriously transported to a fantasy world. There he promptly gains overwhelming powers, the antagonism of the local Demon King, and the affections of a harem of cute, buxom, mature, demihuman and underage girls.…

  • The Year of PulpRev

    In the dankest corners of the Internet, on message boards and Discord servers, on digital and legacy media platforms, in books and films and television and games, there is a war. A war not against flesh and blood, but against the gatekeepers, against the degenerates, against the secret kings of the cultural spheres, against corruption…

  • Maintain Cohesion in Your Fiction Series

    What makes for an excellent fiction series? For that matter, what defines a series? Persistent characters who develop over multiple stories. Conflicts, drama and story arcs that span multiple books. Story-critical concepts that underpin the series, be it magic, high technology, forensic science, and so on. Exploration and expansion of these concepts to facilitate the…

  • 2017 in Retrospect

    I joined Steemit a year ago. It was easily one of the best decisions I’ve ever made. Steemit has changed my life for the better in so many ways. It incentivizes regular content creation, content that adds significant value to readers. Where most of the Internet rewards clickbait and fluff, here’s a barrier-free site where…