The setting occupies a curious place in literature. In theater and film, setting occupies the background. We are always dimly aware of it because it is at the back of every shot. On the other hand, a story is told one word at a time, and for anything to be directly present it must step to the foreground. This is why a book's settings are so seldom seen. They are banished to the start of scenes only to pop up indirectly when Twilight needs to grab a book from a shelf or Pinkie Pie blows up

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This is Big Macintosh:

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"Wish fulfillment" has become a commonly used term to describe stories in which character x does something (possibly with character y) that the audience wishes to see solely for the sake of the audience wishing to see it. "This story was nothing but the same Flash Sentry x Luna wish fulfillment and drivel that we've seen since Faust in her good graces gave us ponies." The plot is thin. The characters are thin. The logic is thin, etc, etc.

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What with all this new site business and the 3 tomes sitting in the Twilight's Library incoming folder (and certainly not because I've rewritten the dang thing three times from scratch already), I will not be putting up my usual writing blog this week.

In some form of consolation, I offer you several brief thoughts regarding the proper consumption of apple cider which I gleaned from acquiring a half gallon of the stuff over the weekend.

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Every author dreams of writing "living" characters -- characters that leap off the page, impress the audience, and drive the plot instead of the other way round. The problem is that "living" characters are like children: for every amazing moment, there are four other rage-filled replotting sessions as you realize that by giving your characters permission to be themselves, you have allowed them to completely foil your carefully established plot.

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Picture books are cool. With ordinary books, each time your turn the page you get your choice of white or black. It has gotten so ingrained that to do anything but will get you toasted to a crisp in the comments section. Not so with picture books. Each page of a picture book can be whatever colors it needs. Of course, the text is generally still black, or perhaps white if contrast demands it, but the rest is allowed all the pretty colors it could wish for. The post-elementary world needs

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This week, I am going to take a look at my most downvoted story on the site and the only complete tale so far that I will never submit to Twilight's Library. The story is simple enough: Scootaloo is listening to the radio, she rolls off the couch, answers the door, and returns to the couch. However, along the way we find 43 upvotes of bonnafide Scootasad with a kicker of drugs and instant grass (just add water). There was a method to the madness. For the story behind the story, you have

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I blog a lot. I review a lot. This week, I have decided to practice what I preach. In my most recent blog, I outlined a type of after-publishing promotion known as a postmortem or retrospective: an author takes something they have written, looks over it again, and writes down what they intended to do, what they ended up doing, what worked, and what they learned from the writing process so others may benefit from the experience.

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It should be common knowledge that posting a blog advertizing your new story several minutes after you actually publish is highly silly. Who is notified of your blogs? Your followers and no one else. Who sees every new story you make? Also your followers. The result is every one of your watchers being spammed with virtually the same message twice. It is similar to repeat ads on YouTube: you are either convinced at first and ignore the second, or you ignore two messages. If you have a

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Last week, we learned that what most authors think of as "showing" is really a disguised form of telling. The common tie is that the author writes with the intention of conveying a fact directly to the reader. In order to truly show a fact, the fact must affect the action of the scene: the characters demonstrate the fact by acting as though the fact were true.

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