Recent content by Allan Writer

That argument can be made about all forms of literature, every genre, every plot. Literary fiction, commercial fiction all of it. It is a complaint made by critics for generations. I am not that interested in it. That you are bored with a particular subset of fiction, contributes little to a...

Something really exciting (not), New Voices in the Nation: Women and the Greek Resistance, 1941-1964. Sadly I never seem to have any time for anything but research for my writing. Other than procrastinating on assorted forums ;) Luckily I like history.

At home a desktop with 2 x 28 in monitors and an external mike for when my hands don't want to cooperate. When out and about a laptop with a riser and external keyboard + mouse, so I don't kill my neck. RSI is no fun! Oh and electronic notes on my phone for if I have an idea when I am away from...

Cool on the win. I see war as a place to give characters extreme experiences. A setting to explore human behavior, rather than being about the war. And I tend to pick anything other than run of the mill characters and circumstances. Like a Soviet woman combat medic, or a Ukrainian partisan...

A traffic division in the town watch! That has me chuckling. I mostly write material set in WWII, but I manage the history by having my characters be very small cogs in vast machine.

Thanks!

I am with you on being dogmatic. Writing rules are made to be broken. That does not mean they have no utility.

Great suggestion, and normally I would agree. What you don't get in these opening sentences is this is a situation that has been building for days. The fires my character is seeing have been started six hours or more before in daylight air attacks. So the first conflagration has been either...

For sure. And I do allow my characters to "tell." But even building first person I have my characters "show" when I can (depending on the character). When I can I would rather have a character describe a terrifying event, and the response that raises in them than having them say "I was afraid."

The internet has been 90% pap almost forever! AI is just increasing the volume of pap! I have found Copilot good to cut down search times recently. Sometimes to check a small fact fast, but mostly to point at resources. The advantage it has over Google for me is it will usually make sense of...

Partly I picked that period because almost nothing is known about it. That way I can have people and events and no one can ever say convincingly "that did not happen then." Does seem like a good time. After your time, but maybe that is why the Norse settlement in Greenland was abandoned!

But it does point confidently at stuff that is made up :)

Thanks for the input, I really appreciate the thought! I half agree. Especially in terms of "telling" - I will look at that as I redraft. In terms of rhythm I am after discordance, this character is just about to be tasked with going in to the town. He is a thoughtful often verbose character...

Nice. Most of my work is set 1935 - 1965. I have a parked novel set partly at the start of the second intermediate period in Egypt. i often have several WIP, but one set in Greece 1941 -1950 is dominating everything at the moment.

You're right I have a terrible habit of over using gerunds! New version. Lit only by the flicker of flames in burning buildings, His Majesty’s Ship Maasai edged into harbor. The town of Kalamata had a hellish feel. The moon had set an hour before, so the flames just made the night darker.