Recently, on a whim, I decided to set Christina Rossetti’s poem Goblin Market to music. I had a lot of fun doing that, as I expected. What I didn’t expect was that the experience would teach me something about writing fiction. But remember, art is holistic.
The reason I decided to share my experience of adapting Goblin Market to music is that it makes for an excellent teaching opportunity. In other words, I want to share with you what I learned from this, because I believe it can be very efficient for anyone interested in writing fiction.
At the end of this post, I’ll also share a link to the album, which you can stream or download for free.
Cover of the Goblin Market music album. The Focus Protocol is a lo-fi music vehicle for some of my artistic ideas(more…)
Quite a leap, isn’t it? From idiocy and Socrates to the internet. Of course, the real issue here – the keyword, in a sense – is idiocy. Is it timeless, and therefore the common denominator? The answer is yes; there have always been idiots. Indeed, the word “idiot” is Greek. However, there’s a difference, too: Idiocy has evolved.
Nowadays, stupidity (I will use the terms interchangeably) is of a different kind. Understanding its characteristics might, just perhaps, help us better confront it.
At the same time, however, I must emphasize my pessimism. As I have stated before (see my posts on ignorance, Dunning-Kruger, and the failure of democracy), I really don’t see humanity being able to overcome its collective stupidity. The problem with idiocy (as Socrates perhaps would’ve agreed) is that those who should urgently question their thought processes rarely do.
Still, if we managed to at least marginalize idiocy, to the extent historical examples have shown possible, we could perhaps allow a glimmer of hope.
Idiocy in Socrates’s time and the one we face today share a common characteristic: Conviction and certainty. Still, there are crucial differences, too, having to do with the rate of propagation(more…)
Story dice are dice (either physical or digital) that have not numbers but icons. Options vary, but usually they are objects, characters, abstract ideas, and other such depictions. How do you use story dice as a writer? Simple: You roll them, then you try to come up with a story containing the icons you see.
Obviously, it’s your creativity and imagination that do virtually all of the work. Though story dice are essentially writing prompts, they can’t provide you with an actual story (duh!)
So, here’s the question of the post title: Are story dice worth it for a writer? The answer is (again, echoing the title) yes, story dice are worth it – but with an important caveat.
If you’re perceptive enough, you’ve surely realized what that is: You! Since story dice depend on the user’s creativity to “function”, they are as good or bad as the person rolling them. Still, it’s not quite as black-and-white. To put it another way, you can learn to use them better.
And so, in this post we’ll take a look at story dice and how to use them as a writer, to get intriguing new ideas for your stories. I’ll also have a little surprise for you at the end of this post!
Storytelling dice come in many forms, but the basic idea is the same: You get a set of random images and your creativity concocts a story(more…)
