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Showing posts from May, 2005

Poem: Ode to Han Solo

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Poems Here's my Ode to Han Solo in honor of tonight's midnight showing of Star Wars III . (And, yes, I know he's not in this one, but I'm a Gen-Xer , so I'm partial to the originals.) H as a hairy companion A version to carbonite N erf herder, according to some S muggler who sometimes gets boarded O wed Jabba a lot of money L ady Vader's husband O fficer in the Rebel Alliance

Book: Echoes of Earth

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Books Echoes of Earth by Sean Williams and Shane Dix There are only two books that I’ve read twice: Madeleine L’Engle’s A Wrinkle in Time and Echoes of Earth by Sean Williams and Shane Dix . In the case of Wrinkle, I wanted to see if a childhood favorite would hold the same magic after fifteen years-and, yes, it did-but, for Echoes, it was all about the book’s style. I don’t know which of these guys deserves credit for the great dialog and likeable characters and which one has the knack for creating interesting places, but the combination of the three left scenes from the book floating in my mind long after I had read them. Since I strive for the memorability factor in my own writing, I dissected a scene to discover what made it so lasting for me. In Chapter 1.1.9, the protagonist, Peter Alander, visits the second of ten enormous alien-built spindles that surround the planet Adrasteia in the Upsilon Aquarius system, over seventy-two light-years from Earth. The chapter op

BOOK: The Complete Idiot's Guide to Writing a Novel

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BOOKS To start off my new blog, I'll post my required reading journal. The first book is by my current mentor in the Seton Hill WPF Program . I probably reference this book at least twice a week, mostly because I have issues with setting, or my conspicuous lack thereof. Tom says to establish the setting early and let the reader know where she is before you start into the story specifics. You would think that after writing fourteen chapters I would remember this. The problem is, I’m one of these people he refers to in his Style section who ‘prefers the loose look of watercolors’ as opposed to the ‘precise, realistic lines of pen-and-ink.’ You know what he would say to that? 'The key…is balance.’ Balance also happens to be the first sub-heading in the Setting section, so I suppose that shows its importance. Here he gives the perfect recipe for story advancement: 1. Mix your action, dialog, and description of setting. (the ingredients) 2. Remember to use your passage