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Books by D.J. Butler
Category Archives: How to Write
Exile Is Broken
So yesterday I finished reading the (as yet untitled) sequel to E.J. Patten’s excellent middle reader garbagepunk action epic horror, Return to Exile. Since I’ve been talking a bit about how novelists have to build a world that is in … Continue reading
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Tagged E.J. Patten, Patrick Carman, Return to Exile, Story Monkeys
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Crap, Man, a Trick!
(Perhaps he’s hidden a clue in his name. Clever people often do that.) I finished The Dark Hills Divide, book one of the Land of Elyon series by Patrick Carman, over the weekend. I recommend it (middle reader fantasy), and … Continue reading
The World Is Broken
I grew up playing a lot of roleplaying games (this was back when they were published as books, rather than boxes full of plasticized crap, and you had to provide your own pencil and dice, not to mention figurines, monster … Continue reading
Posted in How to Write
Tagged Boxes of Plasticized Crap, Inciting Incident, Roleplaying Games, Worldbuilding
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What Went Wrong With Star Wars
This review is full of profanity. It’s also full of a lot of wise observations about what was wrong with Episode I. Watch this, ignore the profanity, and think about what he’s saying about writing.
Posted in How to Write
Tagged Episode I, Film, Review, Star Wars, The Phantom Menace
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Top Down and Bottom Up
There are probably other, traditional terms to describe what I’m about to say, terms that literary critics, agents and college professors would use. I don’t know those terms. This is how the Story Monkeys talk about this stuff. A good … Continue reading
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This Dark Endeavor
Yesterday I read This Dark Endeavor, to be published this fall by Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers. It’s a good book, gothic boy-oriented YA, a prequel to Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein in which Victor Frankenstein fights with his older … Continue reading
Il Romanzo (2)
(From Chapter 31 of The Island of the Day Before, another gem on novel-writing) “It is true that Poets, after having spoken of a memorable event, neglect it for a while in order to keep the reader in suspense — … Continue reading
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Il Romanzo
(From chapter 8 of The Island of the Day Before by Umberto Eco, trans. William Weaver) “A romance,” Saint-Savin explained to him, “must always have at its base a misconception — of a person, action, place, time, circumstance — and … Continue reading
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George Orwell, "Politics and the English Language"
Forget about the “Politics” in the above title and in the link below. This is not a political blog. George Orwell was a master of writing English prose. Nineteen Eighty-Four and Animal Farm are probably what you know him for. You … Continue reading
