Teach Your Kids to Game Week

There are many reasons you might want to turn your kids onto tabletop roleplaying games (like Dungeons and Dragons). Let me just list a few that come immediately to mind: Encourage storytelling, imagination, and creativity. Encourage social interaction with live people. Give siblings a common interest. Encourage reading. Family time! Keep them off the real streets and out of real…
The Horror Genre and Video Games

The Horror Genre and Video Games

"The Horror genre has long been a cornerstone in computer and console games, from Phantasmagoria to Doom, Alone in the Dark to Plants versus Zombies--and many in-between. In the early days, game developers themselves wrote all the text for a game, but in more recent times, many game companies have come to value the polish only trained and experienced writers…

Confessions of a Wily Newb, Part 4, by Paris Crenshaw

Guest blogger: Paris Crenshaw (Go back and read Lesson #3) Lesson 4: Play with formats. This lesson is kind of related to lessons 2 and 3. In the vein of keeping things short and actually finishing a project, I also encourage you to try working with different types of writing. As I said, even if your goal is to write…

Can You Succinctly Pitch? by Alan Baxter

Guest blogger: Alan Baxter suc·cinct –adjective 1. expressed in few words; concise; terse. 2. characterized by conciseness or verbal brevity. 3. compressed into a small area, scope, or compass. As writers we always try to be as brief and succinct in our writing as possible, while maintaining a clear voice and interesting, beautiful prose. It’s the eternal difficulty of not…

Review: Sookie Stackhouse Series by Charlaine Harris

I'm almost up-to-date in the Sookie Stackhouse series (currently one book to read and I'm caught up), so I wanted to give a brief review of them. Angel's Adjectives: Southern and Supernatural I know my adjectives don't tell you much in and of themselves, but these two aspects of the Sookie Stackhouse series are what makes it so much fun.…

Confessions of a Wily Newb, Part 3, by Paris Crenshaw

Guest blogger: Paris Crenshaw (Go back and read Lesson #2) Lesson 3: Finish something! For me, this was probably the most difficult lesson to learn. Again, we’re back to the basic principle that writers actually do write. No one is going to buy or publish half of a story, so when you’re starting down the scrivener’s path, you need to…