As you may expect, it’s hard to find good pizza in Japan. And even if you do find good pizza, chances are it’s going to cost you. The average price of a single large delivery pizza from places nearby us ranges from $20 to $40!
When Abbey and I first came to Japan years ago in Okinawa, as pizzaficionados we were heartbroken.
…until we learned about a magical place called Shakey’s!
A speedrun for a video game is where you try to get through the game as fast as possible. Good speedrunners can complete games in mere minutes, where it would take a normal player hours, or even days to finish.
So then what would a “writing speedrun” look like? Today, we find out!
Books need to have an exciting beginning, one that grips the reader. Something that makes them unable to put it down, or even think about not continuing.
And yet Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World by Haruki Murakami, which purports to “deep dive into the very nature of consciousness,” begins with a man alone in an elevator.
Sometimes a photo haiku-caption context can get bloody. The competition can get fierce, leaving only two competitors, sweaty and panting, competing for the final trophy.
That’s a real photo haiku-caption death match!
Aches throughout history… is there nothing more worthy of humanity’s research?
George Washington’s legendary twisted ankle, Napoleon’s history-making lumbago, and the great mummies of Egypt that were really just suffering from sore glutes after doing squats all day in the sun.
Thankfully we have a dedicated team willing to devote their lives to studying these magnificent bodily defects: the ACHE-ologists!
It’s hard to eat low carb in Japan. Rice is everywhere, miso soup made my eyes bulge when I first saw how high the carb count was, and pretty much every other dish is fried, covered in sauce, or has a hidden potato in their just waiting to jump out and surprise you.
It’s hard… but it’s not impossible! One treat that Abbey and I love to make is almond flour pancakes. They’re easy, very low carb, and most importantly, absolutely delicious.
And best of all, they can be made in Japan. So LET’S GET COOKING!
3rd person past tense? “He said/she ran?” Yawn. Been there, done that, it’s been written a billion times.
1st person present tense? “I say/I run?” Enh. Every young adult book does this nowadays.
2nd person future tense? “You will say/you will run?” …now you’re writing with fire, baby!
You approach an article on the Internet. It’s large, intimidating, and static-y. You smell a whiff of memes wafting from inside. What do you do?
For a beginner writer, a prologue might seem like the perfect tool. You can fill in the reader with all the backstory to your setting and characters, in order to bring them up to speed before the story actually begins.
But in actuality, doing that is going to be poison for your readers.
A good simile is like chocolate syrup on a bowl of ice cream, the perfect addition to a story that makes it all the more delicious and vivid.
But a bad simile is like a bottle of ketchup squirted on top of your sundae, wrecking an otherwise potentially-tasty story.
The question then is, what’s the difference between them and how do you write GOOD similes?
