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Continuity of Experience in Dreams

March 2, 2018

Philosophy

dream, experience, life, musings, time

Dreams and Waking Life

Here’s a question for you: Which are the major differences between your dream consciousness and your waking life consciousness? Pondering on this, you would perhaps come up with some of the following answers: a) you can’t (really) control your dreams; b) limitations don’t exist in dreams; c) dreams aren’t real. This latter possible answer I consider controversial, but let’s leave that aside for another day. Let’s instead focus on another major difference between dreams and waking life: the continuity of experience.

continuity of experience
How would it be, if there was continuity of experience in dreams?

You see, when you wake up in the morning, you still remember what you did the day before. You remember your plans for the present day. And if you left a book in the middle before going to bed, you can pick up from it remembering the plot that far.

The same almost never applies for dreams. With extremely rare exceptions, when you dream you don’t just continue doing what you were doing in a previous dream. There is no continuity of experience in dreams, unlike waking life.

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How to Review a Book Fairly

February 28, 2018

Literature

book, comparing, criticism, fairness, fiction, literature, review, usefulness

As a reader, a writer, and a former academic, I have encountered countless reviews, from various perspectives. I have written reviews for other authors, I have received reviews for my own books, and I have also read many reviews in general. And let me tell you this: most people don’t know how to review a book.

That is, they don’t know how to review a book fairly.

A fair review is useful to the author and other readers alike. Conversely, an unfair review isn’t useful to anyone – and it shouldn’t affect an author (though realistically it often does). In today’s post we’ll take a closer look at what it means to review a novel fairly, and how one can learn to do it. Sneak preview: Leave your personal preferences out of it.

how to review a book fairly
A fair and honest book review cannot be predicated on whether you liked the novel or not
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Types of Fiction Characters: How to Use Them in Your Novel

February 26, 2018

Fiction Writing Tips, Writing

characters, comparing, experience, fiction, literature, writing

To speak of character categorization might be a self-evident matter for some authors, and yet it might appear nonsensical to others. Surely, a writer of the latter group might say, you can’t just divide every character of every novel into just a few categories? The truth is neither “yes” nor “no” – or, if you’d rather see the glass half-full, it’s both. It’s true, that a skillful author can make the most stereotypical character appear as unique and original. At the same time, many character functions are similar. More counter-intuitively, perhaps, character functions need to be similar for reasons we will see further below. Today I’ll tell you a few things about the various types of fiction characters.

I’ll show you why it’s important to recognize, understand, and use these character categories. This article is based on various established sources (for further reading I’d recommend Vladimir Propp’s Morphology of the Folktale), on my academic expertise, as well as on my own writing experience.

types of fiction characters
They all serve a role!
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