Charlie, Mick, and the Secret Strings

Posted on 12 October 2024

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A seven-minute read about…

‘Narrative echo effects,’ a concept explored by Charles Baxter in his essay, ‘Rhyming Action;’
‘Secret strings,’ a literary analysis technique/game used by Michael Rosen when teaching students/children, which includes looking for what I believe to be narrative echoes;

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On Models (In Writing)

Posted on 5 October 2024

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A clay minoan model (restored) of a house. ca.1600 BCE.

Models: Easy to teach, but don’t mistake the map for the territory…
Asking the next question: A little tip you might find useful in your next writing endeavour.

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When the Science in Your Storytelling is Sus

Posted on 18 July 2024

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A comic featuring two figures (Left and Right). In the first panel, Left says to Right, "yeah so i went to go visit my friend-" Right interrupts Left with, "bro's genes told him to get friends" In the second panel, Left stares, bewildered; Right's face is neutral, believing they have said nothing wrong.

OoOoOoOoOo your genes determine that you will read to the end to learn about OoOoOoOoOo:

Oh, it’s THIS guy again: Hey, I’ve seen this one… or so the Monomyth tells me.
A Story of Science-telling: Criti-hyping evolutionary psychology (without the criticism) to explain storytelling;
My God, Pure Paleoideology: What were we doing until 12,000 years ago? Was it all just evolution?
On balance: Surprisingly, authors know what they’re doing. We should hear what they have to say.

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Now We Are Twenty-Three

Posted on 25 November 2023

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A sair heid on a plate. It's a simple cylindrical sponge cake, topped with icing and wrapped in greaseproof paper. 'Sair Head' is Scots for 'sore head.'

I turned twenty-three this week, so here’s a collection of topics that have nothing to do with that:
Frustrations over that bloody video, again;
Books on my radar;
Working on the blog on-the-go with a new cloud solution (that’s not actually in the cloud)

Zettelkasten: An Antidote for Boring Notes

Posted on 4 November 2023

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Note-taking’s a miserable task – notebooks and siloed documents in word processors aren’t the only tools at your disposal.
Enter Zettelkastens – a method of linking notes together, built bottom-up, by you (with some general rules).

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