I create a world of finite somethings

Though the convention certainly had the appeal—or strangeness, perhaps, to the uninitiated—of costume-clad people wandering about, the main focus was to the various things you could do. Dragon Con was the south’s biggest scifi-fantasy-horror convention, so you had guests from films and television, artists and writers for comic books and novels, musicians of all shapes and colors.

After splitting from Cherise, first I went to the panel dedicated to John Noble, the actor who portrayed ...

I mentioned in the last entry about writing stuff that isn't your normal fare as practice. Here's an example: I wrote this from a prompt to tell a nonfiction story in the vein of a "journey" story. The idea is that you had to write something nonfictional that had elements of characterization where your protagonist goes from believing or thinking one thing and, over the course of an event or trip or something of the like, changes their perception. While I can't say this is like, some ...

I often had to laugh when I took creative writing classes. In one such class, a gal brought in a fujoshi-styled A Knight’s Tale fanfiction. She also alluded when we were introducing ourselves in the class to writing Star Trek fiction of a similar persuasion. Meanwhile, another guy wrote a steampunk story that would’ve fit right in with Last Exile and admitted to looking very much forward to Fam the Silver Wing which was due out around then. Then there was this one person who tried to do some ...

Obviously only really an issue for fanfiction, but yeah.

I’ve read a lot of fanfiction for a long time: I was twelve when I first got into it, partially out of a desire to learn to write myself and partially out of the need to find a community for myself as it was around this age I left public school. Star Wars and The Legend of Zelda stuff was where my focus started. If you want to track a lot of my influence for writing, a Young Jedi Knights messageboard community and a Zelda ...

Because hell if my college education does anything but the sort of stuff I'd pick up on my own anyway.

Between the fic contest, talking with friends who just restarted school, and catching an episode of Criminal Minds, oddly, I got to thinking about different story structures.

If you ever watch Criminal Minds, you’ll know that they bookend the episode with a quote that is relevant to the plot of that episode. Sometimes narrative short stories will begin with an epigraph; ...