Read my short story, The Transcendent!. It follows a young scientist who is part of a project to build the first man-made wormhole. The project leads to the uncovering of deep, unexpected truths about human nature and our place in the universe.

Fiction is more fun when there's the possibility of your character dying or losing their mind. Kinda like how engineering is more fun when there's the possibility of something exploding.

When you want to add a new continent cause your world's not big enough.

Do you ever find novel writing all consuming? Like you can't stop thinking about it at night.

You know your story is dark when you're hesitant to write it during the day.

Create a feeling that intersects themes. Great fiction evokes inexplicable emotion.

Is it passion if it doesn't last? Or is the fact that you are capable of passion, of obsession, of depth of spirit and mind what truly matters? Perhaps the core of your being is more important than the fruits of your actions.

Nothing ruins literature more than overinterpreting books like a bad high school teacher.

If you find yourself fixating on your world, on fiction more profound than reality, if it lingers for weeks, years, decades, if it makes you feel like a kid again, makes you want to run free and imagine, then you might be a writer. Then you have no choice but to commit or lose.

Sometimes if I just sit by my keyboard long enough eventually the words start coming out.

Why is it always so hard to decide what to read next.

"You cannot teach a man anything; you can only help him find it within himself." - Galileo . This is why age old advice seems clichéd until you discover it's truth yourself. Then it becomes a revelation.

Do you prefer italicized thoughts or slipping into inner monologue in the same format (free indirect discourse)? . The latter is hard to pull off but I might prefer it.

RT @StoryGrid: I used to believe that too—until I proved myself wrong. Back in 2015, I launched the Story Grid Podcast and started reading….

Short stories are arguably harder to get right than novels. Effort does not equal difficulty. Solving a short, advanced differential equation is more difficult than 8 hours of busy working. But no analogy is perfect, novels have their own challenges: interconnectedness, plots.

Love it when I read the first page and know the whole thing will be great just from the quality of the writing.

"Creativity cannot be taught but it can be learned." - Rick Rubin . You cannot create great art by following some formula. Great writing requires the creator to awaken something within themselves that only they can find. Great art is a genuine reflection of its source, it's.

Most sci-fi stories get orbital mechanics wrong. If you're pursuing a target in space, increasing your speed in the same direction will put you in a higher orbit and make you go slower. Instead, you want to fire your engine in the opposite direction, slow down and go into a.

How much do discovery-writers/pantsers know about their plot events going into writing? How do you figure out when to end things?.

Got my Odyssey tickets a year in advance for 70mm IMAX last night. Insane timeline but now I'm hyped. Oppenheimer was too good in 70mm to miss this.

What if your character doesn't change but the audience perception of them changes as more information is revealed? Can anyone think of examples where that has been done?.