More Laid-Back Heroes: Will Stanton

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Will Stanton from The Dark is Rising  series (the books) is a great laid-back hero. He is the youngest (and the seventh son) of a large and ...

The Heroes Forget in The Dark is Rising Series: How Tedious

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One common variation on the "it was all a dream" trope is when the protagonists forget the fantasy/dangerous world they inhabited...

Dante & Change

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Dante's Divine Comedy is truly remarkable. It backs up the belief that people in history were not all that different from us.   The Divi...

The Storytelling Worth of Sayers's Translation of Dante

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Dante's Divine Comedy is written in terza rima.  Apparently, one isn't supposed to be able to translate terza rima from Italian to ...

Cinderella: Can She Transform?

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In my latest A-Z list, I am tackling characters who transform. I have reached "C." "C" brings up an opportunity to defin...

Give Characters Jobs: Being Santa

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I'm a big fan of giving characters jobs--the characters can then talk about something other than the problem of the week. (In Bones , in...

Give Characters Job: Mandy as Business Owner

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I'm a big fan of characters having jobs. From a writing perspective, jobs give the characters things to talk about, care about, focus on...

Alls the Ms: Maitland to Makiya

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Barry Maitland:  Dark Mirror is a Brock and Kolla Mystery, a police procedural/mystery novel set in London. The Brits are rather good at th...

A-Z Characters That Transform: Colin Craven

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In The Secret Garden , Mary transforms first. And some scriptwriters obviously feel that her character is somewhat abandoned. They aren'...

The Secret Garden: Will a Filmmaker Ever Get it Right?

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My latest A-Z List is about characters who transform. The Secret Garden has lots of such characters! Before posting about a few, I am posti...

What is It about Doctor Shows?

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Some of the earliest popular television shows were doctor dramas. And almost from the beginning--even in the 1/2 hour shows--they were soooo...

Books to Movies: Sad Endings Versus Depressing Endings

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I am generally not a fan of sad endings, mostly because I think they are cop-outs. Any struggling writer can earn instant accolades from daf...

Bilbo's Transformation

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A great deal has been written about Bilbo's handling of his midlife crisis.  From a writing perspective, Bilbo is a transformative chara...

Great Human Moment in One Punch Man

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is...fine.  Dorothy Sayers wrote that there is no group of people who can't find common ground complaining about drains.  In sum, some p...

All the Ms: Mahy to Mairal

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Mahy, Margaret: Mahy, who mostly writes children’s books, wrote the teen book The Changeover . I’m a fan!  Maia, Ward: The short story ...

Transformation: Arrietty and Does She Transform Too Much?

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The new A-Z List is about characters, some in disguise, who transform or reveal themselves. I find this particular theme particularly captiv...

Transformation NOT: Alice in Wonderland

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The new A-Z List (A-Z List 11) is about characters who transform. Character pull off disguises. They reveal true intentions. They change the...

Lesson from the Ms: Make It Personal

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Her rage is personal. Less noble. More interesting. Perusing so many fiction books, I've been reminded of how much human beings love sto...
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