One of the first cards I decided upon for the first deck of Pocket Prompts was ‘Something explodes’. It’s bold, dramatic, and can stir a story. In this series of posts, I’m going to show you how this one card can be used to tell many different types of stories, and affect much more change…
In my last post, I explores the concept of an emotional explosion, to pair up with the idea of a literal explosion. Today, we’re going to look at a different way of using the ‘Something explodes’ card: it’s time to look at dire consequences. One question comes to mind every time the news channel plays…
So far, we’ve looked at types of explosions and how to use them in a story, and a disastrous (or hyperbolic) consequence of the explosion. Now it’s time to look a little further back: cause. Every story has a beginning, middle and end, and even if we begin with the explosion, the root explanation for…
In our discourse about explosions – a sentence I never thought I’d write – we’ve looked at the sort of explosion, the cause of the explosion, and began to look at the aftermath. Today, we’re solely focusing on how the world looks after the explosion. Literal explosions are maybe easier to imagine for this, so…
In previous posts, we’ve explored literal and emotional explosions, dire consequences and Cause & Effect, and I promised we’d explore that more as the expansion of the ‘Something Explodes’ card continues. When discussing Cause & Effect, and specifically when focusing on something so charged as an explosion, one question must be asked that, unfortunately, rings…
Is it uncouth to start a newsletter with a cover reveal? (Author note: this was originally published on my newsletter, so that opening might seem a bit odd now…) How about starting a story at the ending? Maybe a little bit cliché rather than uncouth, but we can deal with semantics at another time. For…
Announcing my next book – TALES OF THE FANTASTICAL – a collection of short stories from 2017 to date. Containing dozens of stories, TALES OF THE FANTASTICAL is one writer’s equivalent of an artbook, showcasing new and old work within the un-boundaries of speculative fiction. As well as an exploration into THE BLACK PAGES, the…