Story Fragment : Avatars of Vulpran, part 6

Go back to to Part 4

Story Fragment: Avatars of Vulpran, part 5

Read part 4 (and find links to previous parts) here

Story Fragment: Avatars of Vulpran, part 4

Part One

Part Two

Part Three

Short story: Lilianne and the Dragon

Based on an idea brainstorming post I saw on Tumblr once.

Story Fragment: Avatars of Vulpran part 3

Part one.

Part two.

Read part 3 below the break.

Down the Stacks Meta: What I Expect from Books

It occurs to me that I haven’t established any metrics or official expectations that I hold books to on Down the Stacks.  Time to fix that.

What does C.T. Vulpin expect from a book?  What makes a book “good” in my opinion?

Story Fragment: Avatars of Vulpran, part 2

Read part one of this story here.

Story fragment: Avatars of Vulpran

This piece is long, so I'm putting it under a page break

A Short-short Story on the Creation of a Multiverse

It is hard to determine where to begin a story, because a “beginning” is rather arbitrary when you get down to it.  Every new beginning comes from some other beginning’s end, to quote a song line that seems to echo across the multiverse, and don’t things make more sense when we see what events led up to them?  But those events are born from earlier events, and those are responses to even earlier stimuli.  Even Creation itself has a beginning in the hands of a Creator hailing from an earlier Creation.  Get back that far, however, and time loses meaning and the stories become just one eternal round, the same thing again and again.  There are variations, of course, but nothing that truly alters the cycle.  Not to mention, the thing you meant to tell in the first place becomes lost, too small a detail to notice.

Enough philosophizing; we’re already at risk of losing the tale and we haven’t even started it!  We’ll begin at this point:

In Defense of Rock-a-Doodle

Rock-a-doodle was a Don Bluth animated film that was released in 1992, and is generally considered to mark the beginning of the downward trend in Bluth films which was continued by things like A Troll in Central Park and The Pebble and the Penguin.  Rock-a-doodle is, perhaps rightly, criticized for a number of things, but I am not part of the critical majority.  Rock-a-doodle has always been and likely will always be one of my top movie picks.  Something about it resonates with me.

The Importance of Good Worldbuilding

If you’ve been reading Down the Stacks, you’ve probably come to the realization that one of the elements of fiction that I care the most about is worldbuilding.  A moving plot and interesting character dynamics are what most people look for in a story, but to my mind no plot or set of characters is complete without an interesting, well-knit world for them to inhabit and interact with.  A well-built world lends itself to further exploration by both the original author and fans, extending a story’s lifespan and providing fodder for discussions.  Worldbuilding also helps to liven up scenes so that the reader’s mental pictures are more than just talking heads on a blank background.

Redeeming Little Miss Mary Sue: Relationships and History

This is the fourth, and currently final entry of Redeeming Little Miss Mary Sue

Redeeming Little Miss Mary Sue: Roles

This is the third entry in the "Redeeminf little Miss Mary Sue" series.

Redeeming Little Miss Mary Sue: Appearances

Before we continue this exploration of redeeming Little Miss Mary Sue, I want to set down two rules to consider through the rest of this series:

1. There are no character traits that are exclusive to Mary Sues; context and suspension of disbelief are  major factors in what a character can and can’t get away with.
2. Characters in a story can get away with things the narration can’t.

Redeeming Little Miss Mary Sue: Proper Focus

For the last four weeks I've been talking about what makes Mary Sue characters intolerable.  This week, I'll begin explaining ways to "redeem" a Mary Sue into a character people would actually enjoy.

There is No War in Mary Sue Land

The following is the fourth in a series discussing the Mary Sue character type.

It's All About Little Miss Mary Sue

The Following is the third in a series discussing the Mary Sue character type.

Little Miss Mary Sue is a Shallow Pool

This is the second entry in a series about the Mary Sue character type.

Little Miss Mary Sue, Where Did You Come From?

The Following the the first in a series of articles exploring the concept of the Mary Sue character type.