Aliette de Bodard on U.S. tropes invading non-U.S. storytelling: “I’m tired of the casual acceptance of violence as a valid answer to anything, of the proliferation of guns in movies and books … I want violence to have consequences, both for those who have recourse to it, and for its victims; not to be something you can shrug off in the morning as if it never happened.”
Jim Hines on the problems of telling groups being treated badly to “be reasonable.”
Some hurricane geekery from XKCD.
How (and why) Waffle House stays open during (is among the first to open after) hurricanes and other natural disasters.
Tobias Buckell on Writers and pellets. Which explains a lot of the doesn’t-make-sense-for-me writing advice I’ve received through the years. And probably more than I want to admit of my own processes, too.
Kate Elliott on story openings: “Sometimes you go straight for the drama. Sometimes a more overtly dramatic scene is not the right place to begin because the reader doesn’t have enough identification with the character to make her really feel for the situation.”
Deborah Ross on why for family members of murder victims, the death penalty doesn’t provide the “closure” that’s often cited as its justification.