World Building

The course description for my Monday night “Writing For Comics, Part 2″ class reads thusly:

A master class on practical writing. Students will learn the standard applications of tropes and genres, the rules of pacing and scene work, the secrets of world building, character bibles, supporting casts, sub-plots, comedy writing, ongoing series and much more.

So. “Standard applications of tropes and genres.” That could be a very freighted thing. Last class we were freighting World Building.

As I said, before, Ty’s approach to teaching writing is very much about, “here is the template; fill it in, and you’ll have a sturdy foundation for your story.” His approach to world building for stories is no different. We spent the first third of the class working on the Successful World Building Formula. He wrote nine points on the board, and said, essentially, “make interesting decisions around these nine points that really speak to the story you want to tell, and you’ll have a compelling world.” Points number four and five were the ones that I thought were interesting.

Read the rest of this entry »

Mirrored from Under the Beret.

This Way

The other day, I was walking home via a slightly different route than I usually take, and I stumbled upon this sign:

Read the rest of this entry »

Mirrored from Under the Beret.

Single Page Application

I’m increasingly finding the idea of the Single Page Application mind-expanding. I think there’s a tendency to think of it as “the type of application you might write in an easy domain”, but I find it interesting try to imagine how any application you might write would look different if you thought about it in terms of a single page application.

Read the rest of this entry »

Mirrored from Under the Beret.