More spoilers for a film that this time is a mere 24 years old. The last film that has, so far, made me run back to the cinema three more times after the first viewing was this one. A modern gothic fairytale with yet another fantastic soundtrack, an alternate contemporary world that was close enough …
Continue reading Why I Write Fantasy: The Three Fours #3: The Crow
Oh yeah. The music, the costumes, the saturated colours, the visual style that played with realism and then deliriously ignored it to tell its story in its own defiant way, and managed to sweep me up in it. I watched this movie four times in a rather dilapidated cinema in Dundee, complete with decayed but …
Continue reading Why I Write Fantasy: The Three Fours #2: Bram Stoker’s Dracula
Spoilers for a 30+ year old movie follow. And for Alien3 too. You've been warned. There are only three movies I’ve paid to see more than once in rapid succession, and each time I ended up seeing the film four times in the theatre. In each case I was lured into the atmosphere of the …
Continue reading Why I Write Fantasy: The Three Fours #1: Highlander
So I received my developmental notes for The Killer and The Dead last week. These notes were a collection of thoughtful comments and suggestions on plot, structure, pacing, writing, setting, and character. Plus a ton of in-text comments on specific aspects of the book, good and bad, pointing out places where improvements could be made, …
I write fantasy because I want to put words together in magical patterns that cause as much delight in others as putting them down did for me. I write fantasy because I want to say something new in a genre dominated by tradition. I write fantasy because I want to explore strange new worlds and …
In creative life, many do not appreciate the time taken between the hammer and the fall. Now I’m going to be all metal and talk about hammers and striking and forging, but the metaphor could just as easily be the time taken between the seed and the flower, and be about soil and water and …
The draft for my editor is almost ready. I'll need the weekend to finish it, but we're almost there. As a result, I really don't have anything to say here. Other than this, haha! Writing is a privilege. I am lucky in my life that I have the inclination, and the time, to write. Many …
I was going to write about my megalomania and need for control and how that factors into my writing choices this week, because recently I’ve been all too zen talking about acceptance and revised visions of what success means to me nowadays, and I wanted to remind myself that I’m still a potentially delusional patient …
I’m beginning to feel the fear. In a good way. I have deadlines looming, and many miles to go before dawn. Right now there is actual uncertainty about whether or not I’ll get everything done on time. This is okay. Not the idea of missing a deadline, but feeling the fear early enough that I …
Continue reading The Writing Life: Feeling the Fear, but Still Having Time for Fun
Glen Clova, orienteering like a ranger or druid or both, the summit of Arthur’s Seat at sunrise, the Trossachs and trout over fire, Loch Katrine swimming, the shock of freezing, the amazement of finding warmer currents and following their course, shivering anew every time they were lost, wet bracken and green ravines down to running …
Continue reading Why I Write Fantasy: Memories of Nature and Other Fragments
Roderick T. Macdonald 