News - Page 60 of 61 - Thea van Diepen

Earthsea, Genderless Humans, and Learning From One Fantastic Author

Thea van Diepen

(I apologize in advance to all formatting nazis… I haven’t figured out how to get my website-making program to make only some words italic. This means that, sadly, all book titles will be encompassed by punctuation marks. The English geek within me grieves deeply.) Lately, I found the website of Ursula Le Guin, one of the most distinguished science fiction and fantasy authors of all time, and one of my favourite authors. If you have never read anything by her

Worldviews

Thea van Diepen

How we see the world will show up in our writing. It has to, if we want to be honest about what we write. But what happens when our worldview is one that others mock? I’m not talking about when a story becomes so preachy it’s ridiculous. I’m talking about when what someone believes is mocked for no other reason than the person believes it. Intolerance? Perhaps. But when members of your own worldview are considered intolerant, somehow the worldview

Drama, Drama Everywhere! Part the Final

Thea van Diepen

Remember when I talked about everything going wrong before Ex-Villain left? It was like the stars were out of alignment or something. You know how, in quite a few fantasy stories, Macbeth included, when the wrong king is on the throne, nature seems to unravel? Well. Allow me to remind you of the enormity of the situation: “Mystery Character started doing nastiness never intended in Author’s conception of the story. Villain’s father came disturbingly close to being raised from the

A Brief Interlude to the Drama

Thea van Diepen

Main Secondary Character (MSC) would have wanted me to make up for the merciless teasing I subjected him to in the last blog post. The only problem is that he’s too busy eating a quesadilla to even notice that I’m writing this (if ever one day he becomes lactose intolerant, I’m sure he’ll drop down dead within the week). This means, of course, that I will have to shoulder the responsibility and explain why he is the way he is,

Drama, Drama Everywhere! Part 2

Thea van Diepen

Once upon a time there was this lovely Villain. He was all planned out by Author to be wonderfully vile, have a semi-complicated past, inspire disgust and fascination, tempt not only Main Character but also Major Secondary Character (MSC), have wants and needs, and yet still be able to be relatable in his motivations. Things were progressing so beautifully. One day, while Main Character was being belligerent to Author, Villain began to think he deserved another story. His (im)perfection existed