Author: harmamae
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Those Pesky Phoenicians! – A Thought From Herodotus
According to the learned Persians, it was the Phoenicians who caused the conflict. – Herodotus, The Histories That is the beginning of Herodotus’ explanation for the war between the Greeks and the Persians (you know, the war that movie 300 was sort of, supposedly, set during). Pretty typical how the blame gets passed on to…
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The Missing Ingredient in Too Many Romance Novels
The Over-stated Role of Attraction There are a couple typical plots for romance novels, but most of them go something like this: Girl is frustrated at being single/sick of dating jerks/doesn’t have time for romance. Girl and Guy meet cute. Girl and Guy hate each other for some contrived reason (usually one of them…
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An Opening to Intrigue You
In the land of Ingary, where such things as seven-league boots and cloaks of invisibility really exist, it is quite a misfortune to be born the eldest of three. – Howl’s Moving Castle (yes, again) I love this opening because it establishes so clearly that this novel is going to poke fun at fairy-tales. The…
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Talking Down to Readers
That Pedantic Tone of Writing You know the style of writing – “Now let me tell you a story…” or “As you shall see in the end…” The style of writing where a strong narrator’s voice almost intrudes into the story, reminding the reader that it is a story. Often this is thought of as…
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That’s Not Shakespeare! Or Maybe It Is
“Alas, poor Yorick!” – Howl, from Howl’s Moving Castle, quoting Shakespeare When I first read Howl’s Moving Castle, I didn’t realize this was a quote from Shakespeare until I read Hamlet a year later. Funny how we tend to attribute things to the last person that we remember said them, whether or not they actually…
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Concerning Hobbits
In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit. – The Hobbit That has to be the most famous line ever scrawled on the back of a student’s exam paper. It’s such a good example of an intriguing opening line for a novel – I remember wondering just what a hobbit was, and why…
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Why Blog?
Advice for New/Old Bloggers Apparently the number of blogs on the net is approaching infinity – if you count everyone’s Myspace and Facebook notes and so on. Still, if that is true, why on earth am I writing another one? Or if it was your New Year’s Resolution to start one yourself, why should you…
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Poor Starving Writers – A Thought from Robert Bloch
So I had this problem – work or starve. So I thought I’d combine the two and decided to become a writer. – Robert Bloch I’ve never read any of Robert Bloch’s work (apparently he wrote Psycho), but this quote sums up why I’ve never really dared to commit to writing for a living. I…
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Breaking the 10 Simple Rules for Writing a Novel
There are three rules for writing a novel. Unfortunately, no one knows what they are. — W. Somerset Maugham Well, while surfing the net I stumbled across a lovely article advising people on how to write a novel in 2012 – you know, if that’s your New Year’s Resolution or something. And some of the…
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Top Ten of 2011: Ugly People, E-Publishing, and Limericks
OR, Why People Read Stories and Stuff It’s Quotable Wednesday today, and since it’s coming up on a year since I started blogging regularly, what better way to celebrate than to quote myself? So here is a list of the Top Ten Most Viewed posts of 2011, brought to you by Stories and Stuff. First…
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