Tag: Advice
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What Makes a Hero?
A couple of days ago, Rawle Nyanzi made a thoughtful post about virtue and heroism. I think he hit the nail on the head by attacking the notion that heroism and villainy are subjective. Heroes can be found in every corner of the globe. From Chinese wuxia tales to Western knights-errant, classical Japanese samurai to modern day manga…
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Lessons from the Freelance Life
I didn’t choose the freelance life. The freelance life chose me. Previously I wrote about my education and employment aspects, and lack thereof. The cold reality was that I was caught in a vicious cycle. No one in my industry wanted to hire fresh graduates with my specific skillsets, only people with several years of experience.…
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Tactical Breathing in A High Pressure Situation
A few days ago I’ve had the misfortune of speaking with a most unpleasant individual. What started as an attempt at civil conversation degenerated into a one-way tirade of insults, hyperbole and outright lies. It reached the point where he uttered three lies in the space of a breath. I called him out on that,…
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Holistic Health for the Working Writer
We live in a new pulp era, an era that prizes proliferation and productivity. Pulp Speed, the ability to write at least 3000 words a day, preferably more, is an essential skill for the writer who wants a shot at the big leagues. Through Pulp Speed I have written in the span of two years…
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The Fighting-Man of a Hundred Faces
The fighting-man is the quintessential pulp hero. He has graced pages and screens since the dawn of the pulp age, driving stories through relentless action and raw vitality. He is an enduring archetype, and for good reason. As Bradford Walker discusses: To succeed as a fighting-man, you have to have the very qualities of character that…
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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…