Writing about kings 2025 Apr 1
zompist's creator put a free PDF on his Patreon a few years ago, talking about nuance at the intersection of fantasy world creation and monarchies. How could a writer take notes from real world history in creating a story about a king that's believable and thoroughly thought-through?

Nothing Good Comes From Nothing 2025 Mar 12
Chuck Palahniuk blogs on why the best writing attacks its core issue not head-on, but from an oblique angle.

Given the writing I'm mostly exposed to these days, I'm finding moral tales aimed at young children – even highly-rated books – to be the worst offenders. It's not that I disagree with the messages, it's that their effectiveness is atrocious. They're flagrant examples of crap writing that prove Palahniuk's point.

Except for Marcus Pfister's The Rainbow Fish. The message in that book is abhorrent and I don't understand its popularity. Summaries claim the story is about the importance of sharing, but that's a very generous reading. The rainbowfish character achieves "success" only when he's been badgered by his peers into giving away everything that makes him special, thereby making himself indistinguishable from the other fish in the reef. "Conform!" the book screams between the lines, "You must fit in before others will like you!" This has nothing to do with Palahniuk's writing advice; I just really hate this book.