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5 Tips For Fight Scenes
Fight scenes are dangerous territory for writers. On the surface, they seem as if they’re guaranteed to keep the reader glued to the action in the same way as they often do at the movies. In reality, though, readers tend to skip over fight scenes – skimming the long, tedious, blow-by-blow descriptions in favour of…
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The Sword on the Stage and the Page
Note: I originally wrote this for ScienceNow.com back in 2014. Human beings have a complicated relationship with the sword. On the one hand, it’s an instrument of violence with a long history written in blood. Yet it also has the capacity to mesmerize us with the beauty of its varied forms and the way a…
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Why I Hate Knights
I hate knights. How is it that the biggest bunch of self-involved bullies in all of European history became the most prominent heroes in fantasy literature? These are the same brutish and brutal thugs who murdered, raped, and pillaged their way across Europe and the Middle East in the name of God (thanks a lot,…
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Balancing Wit & Grit In Fantasy
Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar is a tragic play fraught with intrigue, betrayal, and murder that makes us question the very foundations of human nature. It starts with a joke...
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The Perfect Blade For Every Battle
It’s a dangerous world out there, and if you’re not careful you could soon find yourself on the wrong end of an opponent’s knife, a zombie’s tooth, or a werewolf’s claws. If you’re reading this, then I’m assuming three things: first, you’re in terrible danger. Second, you have, for some reason, kept a copy of…
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The Story Behind Traitor’s Blade
Note: I originally wrote this for Upcoming4.me back in 2014. There are a number of things you try do in the middle of an fencing match: concentrate on your form, look for a hole in your opponent’s defence, dream up the plot for your fantasy novel…no, wait, that last one is a terribly bad idea.…
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The Reader Is The Choreographer: Writing Fight Scenes
I’ve been getting asked about how to write fight scenes a fair amount these days so let me start with a first principle: Violence is boring.
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The Secret Origins of Traitor’s Blade
I often get asked where I got the ideas for The Greatcoats–the swordfighting travelling judges at the heart of Traitor’s Blade and Knight’s Shadow. Here’s where a few of the ideas came from. Itinerant Judges During the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, England saw the rise of itinerant judges – travelling magistrates who would go through counties…
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Keeping the plot moving forward
Note: I originally wrote this for OpenBookOntario.com back in 2014. How do you keep your plot moving forward? This question tends to hit writers in the second act of their novels. The challenge isn’t so much about adding events to the story as it is about creating a sense of forward momentum and increasing urgency.…
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The Long Search For Bard V
Remember back (way back) to before you could find anything you’d ever seen or heard on the Internet? You know, when you listened to a song on the radio and had to hunt high and low to find the album in a store? Or when you found a new series of books but couldn’t the…