Continuing series

I’m running a few series on my blog. This page acts as a table of contents for those series. I’ll update this page as new posts are published.

Twenty Writers, Twenty Books

B. Traven, 1926.

My introduction to Twenty Writers, Twenty Books explains the questionable sanity of starting this project. In a nutshell: I’m writing about twenty writers whose work has deeply influenced me—my reading, my writing, and in life. For each writer I select a representative book to discuss and analyze.

The list so far:

Ten years of blogging

Photograph of Dashiell Hammett

I launched this web site in 2014. In 2024, I began writing brief entries on my favorite blog entry for each year since. The introductory entry summarizes why I started this project, and what I hope to achieve with it.

Writing better fiction with Syd Field’s three-act screenplay structure

Syd Field

Syd Field made a career out of teaching screenwriters (novice and professional) how to write movies using his three-act structure. Although fiction is a separate and unique medium, I’ve learned a lot from Syd Field’s paradigm. This series goes over what I’ve gleaned from Syd Field and how I adapted his three-act structure to writing fiction.

Computer programming & writing fiction

The Girl with the 8-bit Earring

As a software developer and computer enthusiast since the 1970s, I’m often asked what similarities exist between programming and writing fiction. My answer is complicated, and so I’ve broken down my answer into a series of blog posts.