Thoughts and Images

    Book: Fangs of K’aath Author: Paul Kidd Pages: 364 Hard Core Scale: 3/4 Normal Scale:9/10 Publish Date:  2000 (some aspects published in 1990) About: Two crossed lovers, the beggar storyteller Sandhri and the scholar Raschid fall in love in the market square. However, there is more than meets the eye as political unrest deepens between the nobility and desert regions. The Kingdom Osra will be tested for its sins both in and out. Review: Fangs of K’aath is like a fine wrought music box. Wounded up its pieces dance hypnotically and enchantingly so.   Paul is a master of the word, building scene and character to life with wonderful attention to detail. They might be one of the few of those storytellers left in the world. A story for storytellers. Sandhri’s tails are one of the best things in the work and contain the real meat in the work beyond the simple metaphor in their reflection of real-life. It demonstrates the power of the story. There is trope he...

   Writing Treatise VIII. Dialogue:                 The point of this section is not how to write dialogue or how to write good dialogue. I’ll be honest; I am not the best at the endeavor itself. I just wish to discuss some aspects of dialogue mechanics.                   You do not need dialogue. Wait what? Yep, you can write a story completely without dialogue. That is the power of the word. As human beings we expect talking as it is our means of communication. However, in the story nobody or anything has to talk. This is the power of the word in the story. The story can take care of itself without being told. Films, comics, etc. can all be silent too. I feel people lose themselves into dialogue too much at times. There is a beauty in silence, a beauty in things, and a beauty of happening that can be expressed with...

  VII. Showing over telling:                 Simply, a la priori thing, ranted by all us writing kind, but it was requested by several people. More tricks? Techniques? Ranting?                 I mean if anything, this is what developing writers should know first.                   Well, first thing use the right tense for the job. With no frame 90% should be staying from present tense; especially in third person. However, I have already ranted this to death. It leads to stories being told instead of free flowing. Also stay away from the “you,” without a frame. Not only does it lead to telling; it creates 4 th wall rhetoric issues. Now that is out of the way how do we as writers show over tell?        ...

  VI Gender and Ethnicity                 Gender:                 A modern discussion, one could almost argue a strange one in concern of literature. There is a push, mostly through film, for getting gender covered. However, there are arguments of doing it right versus just doing it? A part from Hollywood blunders, I find those blunders leaking into modern literature. Yes, American mass market media often underrepresents woman, trans, and other gender forms. I will not argue against that. However, media with strong female characters do exist and have existed forever written by both male and female writers. That is why this is a strange notion; it is treated as if these prexsiting characters do not exist at least they are not drawn upon in the current discourse. One can look easily at Ursula Le Guin and Andre Norton and point to s...