chrisschallertideaengine

[chrisschallertideaengine]

Don't Panic! It's just a disaster

Yeah, life is tough. But the sun rises the next day, too. And time rolls over all of it. Yes, my current story that I’m planning to finish editing and release in June is a disaster. But I engage with it a little every day. And with the help of a handy criteria checklist (thank you, Larry Brooks!), I’m figuring out what each scene is missing, or what each one could do better. I’m tweaking, a…

[chrisschallertideaengine]

Whew! New-ish Song on Friday!

See? I’m not just a troll who works 45+ hours and complains that taxes are too high. I also make music. This one is a parody this time around. You can check it out, uh… I dunno, I guess look for “Andre and Fermin Buy a Movie Studio” on Youtube after 8am on Friday. What I learned: If I’m going to keep doing this, I need a better recording mic. I’m talking with a guy about this. I really need…

[chrisschallertideaengine]

DnD Flavor Text: Barbarian Power Rangers?

(pours a beer) Put down the shotgun and hear me out. DnD character: Barbarian, but it’s Power Ranger armor. Draws a ‘portal’ through which he joins the armor. The trick is, he can draw this circle and anyone can pass through it. It lasts for one turn, and he can draw it on himself. It has a range of his sword tip. Number of rages per day. The rest is flavor text. In fact, this could be a good…

[chrisschallertideaengine]

It's Only Hard to Start

Not to say that continuing isn’t a challenge. But for whatever reason, mentally, the hardest part is starting. That’s also the part that takes the exact least amount of productive effort. And it’s the part that does the most work. For all the mental tricks, tips, guides, etc out in the libraries and the (by the way, I’m going to challenge myself to not reference the internet for a whole…

[chrisschallertideaengine]

Artificial Intelligence: An Uncreative Future?

I’m watching how AI is peaking. Seriously. This thing is speed-running the Pareto Effect. And that seems to be on all levels. But I don’t think it’s going to go away. Nope. This genie is out of the bottle, and hyper-processing large language learning models, though crap at producing cogent answers at scale, are getting better and better at understanding inputs. So what’s the future of this…

[chrisschallertideaengine]

Diet and Exercise: A Writer's Friends

Have you ever thought that, when you are exercising, your brain is the one place the blood flow does not increase? Have you ever thought that, since your muscles are the reason and focus of your efforts, that your brain is clearly ignored? Nope. Probably not. (pours a cup of coffee) But I had not, up until about two years ago, really thought about exercise being one of the best determinants…

[chrisschallertideaengine]

Practical Theology: Theocracy?

I’m starting to get a feeling for what people mean when they talk about “Christian Nationalism” and “Christians wanting a theocracy.” First of all, they act like God didn’t write the entire book of Isaiah, which includes several very harsh callouts of the Israelite government. Like he didn’t give us Psalm 2 and its wonderful lines like “therefore, you kings, be wise. Kiss the son, lest he be…

[chrisschallertideaengine]

Week Recovery

(glances up from the pillow) Oh. Hey. Sorry. Despite my dedication to crafting a blog post with something sign- (yawns) significant to say, this week drained me. In good ways and bad ways, just drained me. So don’t feel bad about it. Life doesn’t come at you like a steady river, but like a tide or a wave. In, out, up, down, a little more, a little less, suddenly over your shoes when you…

[chrisschallertideaengine]

Blaze the Night

I watched. The Thunder Twins threw their lightning Lance back and forth, running around from could to cloud, roaring with laughter. I watched. Moon roofs aren’t good for a whole lot otherwise, but they’re good for this. I had my camera lens right up against the glass to catch the full picture that I wasn’t getting from inside the car, so I could relax and watch the gods at play until they left…

[chrisschallertideaengine]

Does Marriage Exist in My Fantasy World?

I know there are a lot of books out there in which marriage does not exist. From what I gather, venereal disease and dysfunctional family structures and jealousy also don’t exist in those worlds. Heck, some of those worlds aren’t even fantasy/sci-fi. It’s just “Hey, sexy, let’s get promiscuous.” I listened to a great podcast on the subject of increased book promiscuity in the last decade, and…

[chrisschallertideaengine]

Trauma Scales (at least a little)

Now, I can’t tell you about true shellshock. But whenever my boss asks me to come to the office, I wonder if this is when I get fired for reasons I was never informed about. I get tight in the chest, I have to physically tap my sternum to get it to loosen up. And it never matters how often we have good review conversations, how often it’s just “Could you look into this? I’m only asking you in…

[chrisschallertideaengine]

Vibranium: MCU Snake Oil

Vibranium used to be cool. First, there was only enough to make an incredible metal shield that reflected force instead of absorbing it. Sure, there wasn’t much of it, fine, it was the 30’s when they found it. So, it’s a super-metal that tech at the time could just turn into a sturdy shield. Cool stuff, very comic book. (pours a Moscow Mule) Then, there was a whole storehouse of it in “Age of…

[chrisschallertideaengine]

Realm's Divine Works

In The Wheel of Time, there were artifacts of varying sizes and purposes that were, of course, magical. They couldn’t be manufactured without some serious delving into the Pattern, and twisting those magic rules around themselves until reality threw up its hands and said, “Fine! Have it your way, then!” Due to various disaster caused by various curses, the methods of making those things was…

[chrisschallertideaengine]

"Great Stories Don't Write Themselves" by Larry Brooks: a review

Hoo, boy, this book was a thick read. And, y’know, life interfering. (pours a lowball of whiskey) This book is very much the “Sit down, buckle up, and pay attention, because this is what separates the published pros from the roadside detritus” of all the craft books I’ve read so far. The core of his book is criteria for stories. Granted, this is more for genre fiction (sci-fi, romance,…

[chrisschallertideaengine]

How Old Is My World?

How many of y’all writers have a world more than two decades old that you’ve made up? Realm started on an evening after a Christmas service practice. I think I was a sophomore in high school, and I had been playing Final Fantasy 10 for a little while. My brothers and I theorized on what kinds of aeons (large magical monsters that fought on your side) might have been around in the previous era of…

[chrisschallertideaengine]

Practical Theology: A Little Question

(stuffs some tobacco into pipe) (lights the pipe) (takes a long draw) So I guess that when Psalm 139 says, “I praise you for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Wonderful are your works; my soul knows it full well.” what it really means is “You stuffed me in the wrong body, God, and the ideal body for me means I’m going to have to chop off or surgically add some bits.” (another long…

[chrisschallertideaengine]

How Long to Wait?

You ever have it happen when you’re studying something that you used to do as a hobby, and you come across a resource that makes you rethink the craft entirely, and then you find you don’t want to touch your work-in-progress until you’re done studying the resource, but you still have to, you know, keep practicing, but you don’t want to practice wrong, and then you lose the book? It’s been…