Rationally Writing

Daystar and Alexander are joined by special guest Duncan Sabien (TK17) to discuss multiple perspectives in fiction, including common pitfalls and benefits.

1:30 Archetypes vs Whole Characters

5:34 Choosing Who Gets what Scene

14:45 Shifting Focus and Disorientation

25:06 Different Character Dialogue

35:30 Differentiating Characters

Daystar and Alexander discuss action scenes and how to ensure they're engaging and meaningful.

Timestamps:

1:23 Action Scenes in Different Mediums

5:38 What Makes a Good Action Scene

11:22 Avoiding Repetition

17:01 Rational Action Scenes

20:07 Pacing and Flow

Daystar and Alexander discuss literary fiction, its values and failure modes, and its similarities and differences from rational fiction.

01:20 What Qualifies as Literary Fiction?

15:06 Pretentiousness

25: 03 Literary Fiction and Rational Fiction

35:50 Writing Literary Fiction

45:43 Recommendations

Daystar and Alexander discusses the value of new settings opposed to using an established one, and the idea of others using their own stories and ideas.

01:24 Taking Ideas vs Fanfic

7:17 Stealing Mechanics

11:33 The value of something new

19:36 Taking our ideas

27:09 Guardian

Daystar and Alexander discuss creative appropriation, aka "stealing," and the philosophy and benefits behind it.

01:03 How to not be original

11:10 Adding something new

16:01 Stealing details

22:10 The argument against copywrite

28:38 Artistic distinction for using

Daystar and Alexander explore the differences between good description and bad description, and analyze examples of descriptions from novels.

Timestamps:

01:16 Why is description important?

8:53 What is good description?

14:40 When to put the description?

22:12 Alexander's notable examples

30:00 Daystar's notable examples

Advertisement:

This month, the podcast is being sponsored by Scrivener! It's a great program to help better organize writing projects, from novels to research papers and more. They're offering a 30 day free trial, and if you like it enough to buy it, you can support the show by using the promo code RATIONALLY during the month of March. Hope you find it useful!

Daystar and Alexander explore the differences between GMing a tabletop RPG and writing a story.

01:04 Gaming creds

05:10 Starting a story vs an RPG.

15:50 Railroading

28:36 Players as Characters

35:23 Exposition

37:51 Source Books

Daystar and Alexander explore what makes endings satisfying, effective, or just annoying.

2:41 What makes endings satisfying?

15:23 Alternate endings

18:38 Bad endings

25:56 Ambiguity in endings

32:07 Downer endings

37:58 Endings we've enjoyed

Daystar and Alexander discuss the beginnings of stories, and what goes into an effective or boring start.

Time Stamps:

0:35 What's in a Beginning?

5:00 Two Types of Prologues

9:15 The Third Type of Prologue

17:16 So what, if it works?

20:01 How to make the beginning engaging

30:08 Beginnings We've Enjoyed

35:10 Setting Tone

This week, Daystar and Alexander do their first review by comparing the various rationalities and irrationalities of Star Wars: The Force Awakens and Rogue One, along with general things they liked and disliked about the movies.