things to avoid when writing a book

Life

Let's face it, if I ever write a book then it will likely be science-fiction, so I better keep these guidelines in mind.

I wonder if this means that all you need to do to come up with a good plot is enumerate all possible plots, then remove any that match that list... Hmm...

Posted Monday, April 17, 2006 at 21:04.

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Comments

this is hilarious. Especially this one:

A party of D&D characters (usually including a fighter, a magic-user, and a thief, one of whom is an elf and one a dwarf) enters a dungeon (or the wilderness, or a town, or a tavern) and fights monsters (usually including orcs).

hahahhaha. losers

Posted by: karenski on April 18, 2006 04:39 PM

Someone once suggested (might have been Jenkins) that every science fiction plot that we've seen had been written of in some form by H G Wells. http://everything2.com/index.pl?node=H.G.%20Wells

Invisible men. Aliens invading earth. Time machines.

I concur with karenski's lameness call on D&D fiction and its proponents.

This one was interesting: "An A.I. gets loose on the Net despite the computer it was on not being connected to the Net." Part of the reason most sci-fi completely sucks is that it's allegedly-cool-idea-driven rather than being plot-driven. There was an episode of buffy written around the concept of the completely implausible internet worm, yet I didn't mind it because the episode was about the struggle between the characters, not the audience's struggle to be impressed by some dumbass writer's fantastic idea. That was a bit of an eye-opener.

I wish I had more of a clue about fiction writing. It would be nice to have enough of an idea of what bit I had to develop that I could write a bit every day and improve my skills. My favourite every-day fiction site is girlsarepretty.com.

Posted by: Craig Turner on April 20, 2006 06:32 PM

Mike, you are more likely to write a science fiction novel than you are to re-colourise my blog.

Craig, aren't you a member of the Liberal Party?

Posted by: ann on April 21, 2006 03:50 PM

oh ann, you cheeky monkey.

Isn't there enough fodder re discussion of how lame D&D players are without bringing politics into this?

_cocktail_ D&D is another thing altogether. I have faith in that.

Posted by: karenski on April 23, 2006 10:26 AM

Mang, I would recolourise your blog but you keep on changing your mind about the colours. Ph33r not, something is in the works...

Posted by: Mike on April 24, 2006 11:49 PM

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