Glad to keep you company, my friend. A good conversation always improves a salad.

@@ACriticalDragon Knowing Philip he had sautéed student for lunch.

@@jeroenadmiraal8714 Not fricasseed?

@@marsrock316 That's not alliterative

@@jeroenadmiraal8714 fricasseed freshman

Hi Rox, I am glad that you enjoyed it. I can't speak for Erikson, but i genuinely enjoy discussing this stuff with him, so it is really nice to hear that other people enjoy it too.

I wouldn't say great advice. Knowing your limits and how far you can fake it is an important aspect of that. I wouldn't want to bluff people about knowing what to do in a medical emergency.

@@ACriticalDragon Oh too true. I meant strictly when writing fiction. Don't try it in real life folks! ha

I look forward to the discussion. I am glad that you are enjoying these discussions with Erikson. Hearing writers' perspectives over the years has certainly made me a more eagle-eyed reader.

And yet that is precisely what the opening of Shaun of the Dead plays with to create that joke. It can be done, but it is unexpected.

We might tackle worldbuilding more directly in a future discussion, but I hope at least some of this was useful to you.

@@ACriticalDragon it always is! Thank you.

I always enjoy chatting with Erikson, at the very least he puts up with me. 😁

Thank you very much, I am glad that you enjoyed it.

You are very welcome. Thank you so much for the very kind comment, and for watching the videos. I am glad that they are useful to you.

Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz are definitely favourites of mine.

A Travelogue tends to place the focus on describing the different locations that the character moves through. For example, in Lord of the Rings, if the purpose of the story was to show off what Moiria and Lothlorien were like, instead of using those as settings for what happens. So a travelogue makes the place visited the focus, a story tends to use the place visited as a location in which the story happens. Focalisation is about using the character perspective to provide their view of the setting which may be different to another character standing beside them. For example, a prisoner in a cell and the jailor. They would regard the cell differently, they might focus on different things. The jailor might look to see if the restraints are still strong, but the prisoner might view them as heavy shackles.

Thank you, Diego. I am really happy that you enjoyed it.

You are very welcome. Although I think most people are here to see Steve make fun of me. The educational aspect is secondary.

I am glad that you enjoyed the discussion and got some use out of it.

That is why how all the different aspects of narrative are integrated is just as important as the elements in and of themselves.

Hopefully it was more relaxed and fun than a lecture.

@@ACriticalDragon of course! Just as enlightening.

@@ACriticalDragon had the chance to complete this. Very fun. As a Florida native, I embrace the wet, palpable, slap in the face of arriving back home! Have a Great Day!

You can wed that point to the prevalence and love of quest/adventure fantasies that track the progress of a hero from one location to the next as they slowly explore the world and have an adventure in each new location. Then add in a discussion of first/third person PoV in games, and how technically they are viewed from that PoV but typically narrated in second person. There are a host of interesting overlaps and points involving interactive narrative, levels of authority in narration, and the encyclopaedic explorer impulse.

@@ACriticalDragon As someone who has run his share of tabletop games in worlds of their own devising I do know the impulse to go and show off all the cool ideas put into the world to the audience which makes for bad gaming as well as bad stories in a lot of ways. But the temptation is very strong to show off all the cool bits.

Yup, whipping out your cool bits to show everyone is not always appropriate nor appreciated by every audience. Hmm I may have wandered into a different topic here.

@@ACriticalDragon I'd say that is a general rule for life.

I am glad that you enjoyed it. Thanks for watching.

In our defence, we are nerds about writing. Not much of a defence that, but we are sticking to it.

@@ACriticalDragon I’ll allow it. 😌

Occasionally I stumble across a good point. It is one of the advantages of talking too much, sometimes what I say accidentally makes sense.

@@ACriticalDragon well, this seems inevitable. May take awhile but you find it at some point along the journey. It’s kinda like the thought experiment regarding that one monkey out of a million who will eventually write Shakespeare.

This is where reading widely can really help. Also, a decent thesaurus.

That would be a fun thing to ask Mr. Erikson indeed. I was surely very confused and had to look up some words reading the first 50 or 100 pages of Gardens of the Moon. Luckily you get used to an authors writing style eventually, even as a non-native speaker trying to read English on the level of the Malazan books.

Now that was not something I expected to hear. I hope that you enjoyed the conversation, and I hope that you have a great week, Bennett.

@@ACriticalDragon You too, AP!

Of course. Is there any particular aspect you wanted to ask about?

@@ACriticalDragon How does he go about writing soft magic? What is his process? How does he go about defining what magic does alongside it's limits and costs? What is his advice for a beginner writer like myself on how to write magic? How does he make magic be well magic? How does he avoid making magic like a system? How does he go about interconnecting multiple kinds of magic?

But we have to fight straw men, otherwise they tear up the countryside and leave bits of dried grass everywhere.

The poop question haunts us all now. I am glad that I shared it with the world.