Writing and Publishing Fiction

It was a dark and stormy night. A real toad strangler.

Low-resolution picture of Slaughterhouse-Five movie poster.

An example of a movie that was better than the book?

Hyperminimalism in the visual arts.

Mule Anyone?
(If you had a Commodore 64 in the eighties, you know exactly what I am talking about.)

In software programming a self-recursive program is an error that can occur if a line of code refers to itself.

If I were to describe my writing style, I would probably classify it as speculative postmodern neo-minimalist metafiction. Followers of Unpublished Guy have already been treated to various samples of this enigmatic writing style if they followed my novel writing effort in July. Every good writer should challenge themselves and try different writing styles.

Way back when I was more earnestly learning the craft of writing, I was reading through several different books on writing fiction. Almost immediately, I felt that I was reading the same book over and over again. It was if they were all cribbing from the same set of Cliff Notes. Show don’t tell. Give your characters a distinctive trait.

Art of Fiction: Notes on Craft for Young Writers was different, both philosophical and practical. Academic and grounded. Finally, a guide to writing that went beyond storytelling abstractions or superficial suggestions on character development, plotting, point of view, and themes.