Tag: Writing
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Tired Tropes: The Superpowered Loser
Everybody knows That Guy. He’s in the corner in the dorky clothes, his eyes always trained on the floor, either mumbling in hesitant whispers or holding court in long droning tirades. He holds a dead-end job and lives in a dead-end home, either in a tiny danky apartment or his parents’ basement. He’s got no…
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Why Singapore Literature Turns Me Off
Once again, the arts community is promoting Singapore literature through social media and the mainstream media. The latest initiative is #BuySingLit, billed as “an industry-led movement to celebrate stories from Singapore”. Once again, the news turns me off SingLit. A History of Disappointment As a child I was a voracious reader. I read every book…
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Tired Tropes: The Potato Protagonist
If a potato has more personality than the protagonist of a story, the writer is doing it wrong. The best stories are driven by their characters. The best characters aren’t two-dimensional constructs of excessive verbiage, but a reflection and amplification of the myriad facets of humanity. Characters must resonate with readers, acting, talking and thinking…
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Tired Tropes: the Tsundere
Welcome to Tired Tropes, in which I dissect popular tropes I find annoying. While tropes are tools, they can be overused or done badly, and Tired Tropes are especially gregarious examples of them. Here, I take on the tsundere. The tsundere is a staple of Japanese media. She—for the overwhelming majority of tsunderes are female—is…
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Why I Avoid Reading Violence in Fiction
I’m not a pacifist. But I must confess: in the vast majority of manga I read these days, I skip most depictions of violence. In books, if I encounter an action scene that doesn’t make sense, I just dump the book altogether. Fiction requires suspension of disbelief, and when a sequence triggers disbelief, then the story has failed. There…
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To 2017: Write Less to Write More
If you’re a writer, nobody cares about how many stories you’ve written. Only about the stories you’ve published. Ideas and stories are meaningless if they are locked away in a hard drive or scrapbook. They only hold value when they are shared with the world. You’re not an author if you don’t publish your works.…