Jade Varden Official Blog

When you tell people you are a writer, or that you want to be, you will invariably hear a piece of advice that all non-writers love to share: write what you know.  So, what does that mean and are you doing it? What Do You Know? Though this little bit of advice is well-intentioned, hearing that you should write what you know is extremely discouraging. What if you want to write about a fantasy world that exists far from planet Earth, or dive into a time that is long, long past? What if you have never worn a corset or held a sword or gone into battle behind the yoke of a starship flying across the galaxy? Does every story you write have to be set yesterday in a suburb or a city that millions of people already know? What if your character wants to eat truffles…and you've never tasted one? Write what you know is a pretty impossible thing, when you really think about it. But there's good news. This trite and usually unwanted phrase, "write what you know," does not mean what...

 Everyone has a list of books they want to read and every reader has their favorite books. But when you read a lot, eventually you'll finish this mental list. And when that happens, you might not know what to read next. One website has decided to answer this age-old question. Discovering Books   Shepherd is all about book lists. If you want to know what to read next based on author recommendations, types of books, books by certain authors any all kinds of different categories, this is where you need to be. For example if you love books about time travel , you can find recommendations for specific books that fall into this category and even find out what makes certain books so readable. I recently did a list for Shepherd about switching places , a theme that Deck of Lies readers know very well. Go check it out and go find out more about all the books you're going to want to read soon.

The dues ex machina. Foreshadowing. Using an allegory. The Roman a clef. Some literary terms sound so cool, you want to figure out what they are just to use them. And then...there's the Mary Sue. Who is this character and how is this a literary thing? Mary, Mary Quite Contrary Mary Sue is a name that many critics will use, often with a bit of a sneering tone. But she sounds kind of sweet and innocent, so what's so bad about her that critics always seem to dismiss this as a literary device altogether? The Mary Sue is a specific character trope, meaning it's a frequent and somewhat static characterization that appears in fiction of all kinds, be it on stage, on screen or on the page. And despite the name, a Mary Sue character can be of either gender, both genders or have no gender at all. So what makes a Mary Sue a Mary Sue? For starters, they are ridiculously lucky. And unlike most of us mere mortals, they emerge from the worst of situations generally unscathed. They are oft...

When critics talk about books, they tend to throw around all sorts of important-sounding words and phrases, like “allegory” It’s a big, fancy word and it’s almost always said in some sort of reverential way. Many of the greatest stories are given that label, allegory. So...what the heck is it?   Defining the Allegory  In the proper definition of the literary term, an allegory is any story, poem or another work of art that has a hidden meaning. Usually, that meaning is political, religious or somehow moral in nature. But that's just the problem with an allegory. There's a fine line between a real allegory and an interpretation. One of the most well-known allegorical stories, they say, is “The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe” by C.S. Lewis. It’s all one big metaphor for the life and subsequent death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, perhaps the most famous literary figure of them all. Critics say the book has extremely clear references to the Biblical story of Jesus of Nazareth...

Being funny is a huge asset in writing. People remember what's funny. They react. If you can make someone laugh, you can make your stories much more enjoyable. But is funny something you can learn? How did comedic writing start...and how can you master it? Ha Ha Ha The first stories were not funny. The earliest stories ever found were epic, lengthy tales full of tragedy and trials. The first plays ever performed, way back in ancient Greece, were tragic tales. But then one ancient Greek decided he didn't want to make people cry. He wanted to make them laugh. Aeschylus is considered to be the father of comedy because he was the first playwright to write a comedy. It was in ancient Athens, the city famous for building the Parthenon and inventing democracy. It was classical Greece, a time of learning and enlightenment. Great philosophers and mathematicians walked the streets here. It was in this great city of the ages that Aeschylus invented the idea of comedy. And he did it with a...

Star-crossed lovers, destined to never be together. Revenge that becomes twisted and ugly, turning back around to go the other way. The mother who kills out of jealousy and rage when her husband takes a younger woman. If you think you've come up with a plot so twisted, so dark, so gory and tragic that no one can top it, guess again. Whatever you write, the Greeks probably wrote it first.   Been There, Done That   Incest. Debauchery. Infidelity. Murder. Self-mutilation. Patricide. Matricide. Whatever it's called when you kill your own son. It's not a new show on HBO. It's your basic Greek tragedy. Most modern storytelling was shaped by those early Greeks, who went on to inspire Shakespeare, James Joyce and countless others. The Greeks took their characters into Hell, sometimes literally, and saw them ripped apart by plot twists, sudden reveals and betrayals of all kinds.   If you're looking for new story inspiration, try turning to some of the oldest stories ever wr...

The oldest recorded story is an epic tale of adventure. It's fraught with passion, death, battle and love. It's a tale of a heroic journey. And in this regard, it's pretty much like every other epic story.  The ancients loved their epic adventure tales. Hercules, Gilgamesh, Beowulf and their ilk continue to capture the imagination and inspire new retellings of their stories. But when it comes to modern storytelling, is writing an epic an epically bad idea? The Long, Long, Long Tale Of… Epic tales, whether they come from the ancient Middle East or J.R.R. Tolkien, tend to have some elements in common. There is usually a hero who is often tested, and frequently. There are dragons to slay, unusually metaphorical but sometimes actual (looking at you, Beowulf). Action, adventure, romance, good versus evil...you get the idea. But epic tales often have yet one more thing in common: they’re long. Like super long. Like the fourth Harry Potter book long. And if there’s one thing tradi...

There's a well known episode of "Star Trek" that depicts a conflict on a planet that is being visited by the crew of the starship Enterprise. The people on the planet are embroiled in war. One group of people has bright, white skin on the left side of their bodies and black skin on the right side. The second group has white skin on the right side and black on the left. Because of this, they are gripped in bitter war. And as we know, "Star Trek" aired in the 1960s, during time of great racial strife. And this is what we call hitting readers (or viewers) over the head with a metaphor.     Also known as being heavy-handed, hitting your readers over the head with your point is a sure way to get that point across. But is it also a sure way to annoy your readers? Beating a Dead Horse There are lots of metaphors for overstating a point, even when it's a plot point in a story. That's because it's a thing that many people don't like. However, re-stating a...