Mary Catelli's Erraticly Updated and Exceedingly Ill-Organized Journal

Just select from here:

Best of the Decade Data: Common Words in Titles

"The three-volume novel is extinct."

Full thirty foot she towered from waterline to rail.
It took a watch to steer her, and a week to shorten sail;
But, spite all modern notions, I've found her first and best --
The only certain packet for the Islands of the Blest.

( Read more... )

"The undiscovered country, from whose bourn. No traveler returns" -- raising the question what in blue blazes did Hamlet think of the ghost?

( Read more... )

Liminality.  It comes from the Latin limen, meaning threshold.  And those poised on the threshold may find it like limbo.

And it's really useful in fantasy.

( Read more... )
part of

Another reversal trick starts much earlier in the story.  When you know something will be needed in the future of the story, introduce it as the opposite of what it will turn out to be.

( Read more... )

The immortal words with which so many D&D stories open -- and so a cliche that people try to avoid. An amusing list of alternatives here, but note that it ends: "Or the PCs could simply meet in a tavern..." Because, of course, it's an excellent way to get people to bump into each other. It's the place where travelers stay (if it's an inn as well) or eat. It's the place where locals socialize. It is therefore exactly the place where someone who wanted help would post the notice of the fact, etc.

( Read more... )

"City of Wizards is normally quite a GOOD thing, since only Good WIZARDS seem able to live together. . . .There have been cities of EVIL Wizards in the past.  You will occasionally come across the sites of these, reduced to a glassy slag during the ultimate disagreement."

The Tough Guide to Fantasyland by Diana Wynne Jones.

( Read more... )

I was a panelist for this one.

The moderator asked us all what tropes we were tired of seeing.  To which my reaction was -- you know, there are very few tropes that I object to that I don't have other grounds to object to.  The elitist magic, where you have it or don't, and not having it is not like being tone-deaf, a rarity.  It's common -- all over the place -- but I can object on the grounds that it's a cheap way of making your character a special little snowflake.

But nothing ever gets to be a cliche without over-use, which means it has to get itself used, a lot.  And it has to have some virtues for that.  Respect your cliches.  They've got something going for them.

But the trick is breaking off the baggage and giving it new baggage, I think.

(More on panels tomorrow.)