Writing Archives - Martin Stellinga

Tangled yarn

Often, stories lack a proper plot, but sometimes it’s the opposite: a story can drown in too much plot. And that can be a big problem.

The negative/positive trait thesaurus

Writing a great story starts with thinking up great characters. This sounds easier than it is. Two tools that can help are the positive and negative trait thesauruses.

5 common mistakes about hacking in stories

In my career as a software developer, I’ve seen a lot of television and novels mangle the depiction of hackers. Today, let’s go blow apart some of those erroneous depictions.

Scrivener, my writing tool of choice

when I was eight years old, I attempted to write my first story on my grandfather’s old typewriter. I quickly learned typewriters are not very forgiving when it comes to typos or rewrites. Nowadays I use Scrivener for writing, and maybe you should too.

Lucifer Season 2

After my positive review of Lucifer season 1, I feel obliged to also present my far less positive review of season. Season 2 manages to do just about everything wrong that season 1 did right.

So, spoiler warning: I’m going to break down season 2, revealing a lot about season 1 in the process. Note that I haven’t seen all of season 2 yet, but I’ve seen enough for a review. Also, it will take another month or so to soldier on through the last few episodes and my scathingness is now fresh.