Category Archives: Essays

I read Tom Shippey’s The Road to Middle-Earth years ago, back when The Fellowship of the Ring was filming. I remember being sort of just stunned at the depth of insight in the work. It added whole new layers to the Middle-Earth story for me. Shippey has since gone on to be recognised as the world’s foremost Tolkien scholar. Continue reading

At first glance this might either puzzle you, or it might ring gongs of accord, and yet still puzzle you. By ‘game fiction’ I mean the sort of fiction either produced by game companies (though in particular pencil and paper roleplaying game companies), and in particular, in particular, the fiction that would actually be somewhere in the rules book itself. Continue reading

This is the final in my short series where I’ve attempted to root out the origin of some writing adages and put them in context. It seems more than likely that “murder your darlings” should be the easiest of these to hunt down.  Continue reading

After hunting up an early reference to Write What You Know, I thought I’d have a quick hunt for that other old adage of writing advice, Show Don’t Tell. This is another piece of advice that is useful in some but not all instances for some but not all writers.

If you tend to over-labour your writing and use too much description then you might well need to tell not show, after all. Usually telling is required when you need to keep the pace going quickly and when the immediate scene is of less importance, either to the story or the character. You can think of this as a ‘zoom’ even. Continue reading

I was listening to an author interview today when the interviewer mentioned that old adage from writing school – write what you know. As far as writing what you know about emotionally this bit of advice sort of makes sense, though it is more often taken far more literally both by would-be writers and their teachers. When taken literally the adage makes little sense. Continue reading