George R. R. Martin is often credited with describing his writing process as being more like a gardener than an architect. In other words, he prefers to discover a story as he goes, editing it here and there like a gardener tends his plants, but mostly allowing the process to unfold naturally, rather than planning … Continue reading Lessons from GoT Part 3: This is the Way the World Ends
One of the most common tropes used in a fantasy series is to begin with a young, naïve hero who is scooped out of his sheltered, mundane experience (usually by a mysterious bearded wizard) into some kind of grand adventure. In The Rivan Codex (a great read for anyone interested in the mechanics of very … Continue reading Lessons from GoT Part 2: Building the Sandbox
Have you ever read the credits on a movie and find a long list of “Bartender”, “Soldier A”, “Drug Addict,” “Man with Hilariously Large Penis” etc? Characters who appear only for brief moments with few, if any speaking lines and whose names remain unknown because the script writer never bothered to give them a name? … Continue reading Lessons from GoT Part 1: When Every Bleeding Grain of Sand has a Name… [Spoilers for Book 1 below]
The Rookery 