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Books by D.J. Butler
Monthly Archives: April 2011
Congratulations!
(Notice that, even here, conflict generates interest. The best thing about this photo is the cheesed-off little gargoyle-pixie in the bottom left.)
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Basic Plot Failure: the Deus ex Machina
It is especially bad writing to have your protagonist win because someone else just makes him win at the end. This is called a deus ex machina, which is fancy-pants talk for “someone or something else just makes your protagonist … Continue reading
Posted in How to Write
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The Indiana Jones Rule
Other characters can have all kinds of luck, good, bad and ugly, but your main character, your protagonist, in all things that matter, can only have bad luck. This follows from yesterday’s post and foreshadows tomorrow’s.
Posted in How to Write
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Basic Plot Failure: Passive Main Characters
The basic plot of a novel consists of a main character trying to accomplish some genre-appropriate task (save the kingdom, solve the crime, stop the bomb, overcome obstacles to love, whatever). It follows that one basic way in which a … Continue reading
Posted in How to Write
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Higher Justice
This is not a ballad, because it has a repeating chorus (it has no bridge). It is, however, a narrative song, and it is filk, being a non-canonical adventure of Mike Mignola’s great neo-pulp crimefighter, the Lobster. (Heaven Bound Bob … Continue reading
Posted in Song, Writing Sample
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The Man with the Plan
The basic structural building block of any novel is a character who wants something and acts to get it. The account of what happens when that character acts to get what he wants is the plot, if the character is … Continue reading
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What Is Steampunk? (2) (Cornish Monster)
From the Eden Project, near St. Austell, Cornwall.
Posted in Steampunk
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Little Boy in a Dress
Francis Drollery, Ghost Crusader is a series about the ghost of a ten-year-old boy, doomed to fight evil forever… wearing a dress. This was something that was done by families of a certain class, in England and in the U.S., … Continue reading
Posted in Art
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