Activity for Mason Wheelerâ€
| Type | On... | Excerpt | Status | Date |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Edit | Post #36803 | Initial revision | — | about 5 years ago |
| Edit | Post #34511 | Initial revision | — | about 5 years ago |
| Edit | Post #34402 | Initial revision | — | about 5 years ago |
| Edit | Post #33022 | Initial revision | — | about 5 years ago |
| Edit | Post #32524 | Initial revision | — | about 5 years ago |
| Edit | Post #20263 | Initial revision | — | about 5 years ago |
| Edit | Post #17002 | Initial revision | — | about 5 years ago |
| Edit | Post #15696 | Initial revision | — | about 5 years ago |
| Answer | — |
A: How can I convince my reader that I will not use a certain trope? The first thing that comes to mind when I think about this is Brandon Sanderson's Mistborn series. In the first book, our protagonists are working to bring down the empire of the Lord Ruler, an immortal God-King tyrant that has oppressed the world for a thousand years. They end up succeeding. (Hopefu... (more) |
— | over 5 years ago |
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A: Is a lawful good "antagonist" effective? The classic example of an effective Lawful Good antagonist is Inspector Javert, from Les Misérables. He is a good person who cares deeply about upholding the law, which brings him into conflict with the protagonist, Jean Valjean, multiple times throughout the story because Valjean is a reformed thief... (more) |
— | almost 6 years ago |
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A: Do I really need to have a scientific explanation for my premise? Science is all about establishing rules that helps us understand how the world works. If your work is set in a different world and things in-universe work in a different way, that's fine. But here's the important point: if the science is different, the readers need to understand how the in-universe s... (more) |
— | almost 6 years ago |
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A: Is it time to start closing up my novel? You've still got plenty of room to run. For example, Elantris, Brandon Sanderson's first novel, is around 200k words, and it doesn't feel too long at all; it's big enough to tell the story being told. It sounds like you're closer to the end than the beginning of the second act, so it's probably about... (more) |
— | almost 6 years ago |
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A: How best to avoid the appearance of stereotype? Two things to keep in mind. First, stereotypes exist for a reason. Pattern-matching and association are what the human brain does best, and when lots of people notice the same thing, that many examples of a category have certain characteristics, we form a cultural-level association between the two. ... (more) |
— | almost 6 years ago |
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How to keep the protagonist from being the only interesting person in the world? I've really enjoyed the CW's show The Flash ever since it came out, but they recently did something that kind of feels like a mistake on the writers' part. For those unfamiliar with the show, Barry Allen, the titular Flash, is a superhero whose powers include the (somewhat hard-to-control) ability t... (more) |
— | almost 8 years ago |
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Why does the villain always win right before the hero defeats him? One common setup for a story goes like this: - We have the heroes on one side - We have the villains on the other side - The bad guy has an evil plot that will cause some undesirable result - The heroes know about the plot and are trying to stop it Very frequently in such stories--in almost all of ... (more) |
— | over 8 years ago |
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A: How to avoid the 'magic explanation' info dump in Fantasy novels This is tricky, because you can't explain the way magic without, you know... explaining the way magic works. The trick is to make it interesting. I think one of the best examples I've seen comes from The Final Empire, the first Mistborn book by Brandon Sanderson. It opens on a plantation on a very f... (more) |
— | almost 9 years ago |