Fiction Forge Indy: Brandon McNulty

Showing posts with label Brandon McNulty. Show all posts

Sunday, February 16, 2025

Another great video from Brandon McNulty

This video discusses 11 great tips to get a story done faster. These are fantastic tips.

I have done most of these things at some time in my life. How do we do them more consistently?

Monday, September 23, 2024

Hollywood's Bloated Ending Problem--a quick Romulus note

Hollywood's Bloated Ending Problem (Writing Advice) from Brandon McNulty

Just thought I'd share another video from Brandon. This one talks about endings, and he makes a good reference to Alien: Romulus. After my last post, I thought this was kinda interesting.

Not only that, but the videos Brandon McNulty does with these Good vs. Bad are lots of fun.

Saturday, July 1, 2023

Prologues - The On-going Debate

One of the discussions during our in-person meeting with the writing group was prologues.

I have gotten a "reputation" in our writing group for telling writers to get rid of their prologues.

I write this with a smile.

In the above video (which I must say, I am enjoying Brandon's videos quite a lot although I do not always agree with what he says), prologues (prologs?) are defended.

I have read some wonderful prologues, but mostly, the writers I have seen use them artfully have not written them in the last fifty years or so. Many of the prologues I have read in novice novels seem to fail for all the reasons Brandon McNulty discusses above--but I could probably add a few more reasons to the list.

In the meantime, I challenge the writing group to seriously evaluate the intent of a prologue before they follow this trend--a trend that seems to have lost its punch. Mostly, prologues seem to promise action or mystery or tension in the pages to follow, but the writer shouldn't need a few pages before the book begins to tell the reader that the book is going to be interesting. This should be in chapter one.

Saturday, May 6, 2023

Bad Dialogue vs Good Dialogue (Writing Advice) by Brandon McNulty

Just watched this video. This has some interesting and amusing examples of good and bad dialogue, and the explanations are fantastic.

Worth the watch.

I'm going to watch some more of Brandon McNulty's videos. Anyone know his books?

Mike

Hi. My name is Michael Moir and I'm a writer.

I don't know when I became addicted to the printed word, but over time I have found that I can't put it away from me. My therapist says it has to do with the little yellow books that were forced upon me in Kindergarten (See Spot Run...Run, Spot, Run! RUN!!!), but in the depth of my soul, I know it is deeper than that. I was born with this in my very DNA. Phrasing, grammar, and plot structure are as sure in my being as cytosine is to guanine. It is a dark and wildly fantastic creature that gires and gimbles in the shadowed places of my soul. I have been told that I must find a way to purge the wordful animal within (my therapist recommended me to a witch doctor in the Andes), but I have decided to learn to live with it. This desire, this compulsion, this demon that is writing is me and I am it.

I call him Steve.

Randy

Hi! I am Randy. I'm pretty sure that I started writing when I held my first crayola. Unfortunately, I grabbed the white one which left little proof of my brilliant earlier works! I write fiction that's often centered on gay characters - but sometimes off-centered gay characters, too -Ha! Because of the poor recording or admittance of such affairs due to prevailing political and religious views, such historical possibilities of gay relations are difficult to accept, let alone imagine. But, of course gay relations occurred, and much more often than the historical records dictate. I like to give honor to my gay brothers and sisters of our hushed past by conjuring such situation backdrops of history and breathing life into what I cannot know really occurred, but what I feel is closer to reality than it is to fiction.