Rationally Writing

Alexander and Daystar discuss Bottom Up Storytelling, bring up common pitfalls to avoid, and explore some homespun examples. Timestamps 00:35 Top Down vs Bottom Up 08:24 Natural Stories in Premises 11:06 Pitfalls in Bottom Up 24:20 Homespun Examples

Daystar and Alexander discuss how authors explore social and political systems through top-down storytelling. Timestamps: 0:25 Top Down World Building 2:29 Science Fiction for Social Commentary 18:41 Top-Down Writing in Our Work 25:30 Fitting Story to Genre 33:28 Tips for Top-Down

Daystar and Alexander discuss the common pitfalls and problems surrounding religious beliefs in fiction, and how to avoid mistakes that can turn off readers, whether religious or not. Time Stamps: 00:31 Personal Backgrounds 05:52 Religion in Fiction 10:05 Real Religions vs Fictional Religions 13:28 Religious or Atheist Strawmen 23:19 The Role of Faith 27:24 The Problem with an Afterlife 31:13 Do's...

Daystar and Alexander discuss exposition: the good, the bad, and the common pitfalls. Timestamps: 0:45 Exposition vs Narrative 4:38 Bad Exposition 17:00 Exposition as Story Character 18:22 Exposition Timing 24:30 Good Exposition

Special guest Eaglejarl joins Daystar and Alexander to discuss their experiences of the dreaded writer's block, including ways to avoid and get through it. Timestamps 00:52 How does Writer's Block manifest for you? 9:07 Avoiding Writer's Block 20:15 Getting out of Writer's Block 27:20: Everyone Dies

Daystar and Alexander finish discussing serial fiction, namely, chapter length, serial structure, and the need for continuous character growth and new conflicts. Timestamps 00:34 Chapter Length 03:56 Overall Length 6:18 Dangers of Stretching Stories Out 10:06 Serial Structure 12:33 Continuous Character Growth 17:23 Continuous New Conflicts

Daystar and Alexander discuss serial fiction's history, pros and cons, and how to navigate scheduling. Timestamps 0:45 Features and History 10:30 Pros 15:31 Cons 18:14 Transitioning to Publishing 21:00 Scheduling

Daystar and Alexander explore the different types of Multiverse stories, and how to make them compelling and rational. Timestamps: 0:40 Why we enjoy multiverses 5:54 Types of multiverse stories 10:58 Realism of multiverse stories 16:16 Multiverse and Fanfiction 19:53 Bound vs Unbound Multiverses 34:22 Writing Multiverse Stories well

Alexander and Daystar discuss the ways Time Travel manifests in fiction, and the various challenges and story space created by each. Timestamps 0:30 Types of Time Travel 7:00 Static Timelines 13:29 Multiple TImelines 25:54 Ripple Effect 35:21 Hybrids and Opportunities

Daystar and Alexander discuss some of the major problems with prophecies in stories, and ways to potentially avoid the major pitfalls. Timestamps: 1:22 Prophecy as a way of Spoiling Tension 5:56 Creating Conflict 10:35 Developing Characters 11:45 Prophecy Tension 16:45 Predictable Attempts to avoid Prophecy 19:00 Shallow Intrigue 22:10 How to make prophecy work 30:55 Tricking Prophecies 37:03 Cond...

Daystar and Alexander go into detail on ways to adjust story structures to more rational stories. Timestamps 00:35 Story structures in rational fiction 7:07 Non-standard endings 14:15 Balancing Endings

Alexander and Daystar explore the different ways of planning out and structuring stories, and give examples of their strengths and weaknesses. Time Stamps 00:37 Story Circles 12:40 TV show structures 20:54 Chapter by chapter planning 24:01 Alternative story structures

Daystar and Alexander explore how to match antagonists against protagonists, how villains should push heroes, and other ways to structure compelling antagonists and conflicts. Stay tuned after the ending music for a book recommendation and our first advertisement! Time Stamps 00:34 Matching Antagonists against Protagonists. 04:08 Fixing Doomsday 6:42 Villains push Heroes 14:49 Reality vs Fiction 2...

Daystar and Alexander explore what makes for compelling story antagonists, and discuss some of their favorites. Timestamps 0:34 What Makes an Antagonist? 2:38 Shallow Antagonists 9:06 Favorite Antagonists: Randall Flagg 12:41 Favorite Antagonists: Lex Luthor 17:54 Basics Do's and Don'ts 25:16 Creating Motivations (32:15 Seriously guys please don't blow anyone up) 34:10 Favorite Antagonists: Magnet...

Daystar and Alexander describe five of the major types of conflicts in storytelling, and the pitfalls and strengths of each. Timestamps: 00:30 Why do we need conflict? 02:05 Man vs Man 05:54 Man vs Society 14:28 Man vs Nature 21:27 Man vs Self 28:32 Man vs Technology

Daystar and Alexander continue discussing magic systems, including advice on constructing one that's rational and compelling. Timestamps: 1:10 Sanderson's Second Law: Limitations 8:25 Sanderson's Third Law: Expand before adding 15:05 Exponential complexity and "Why didn't anyone think of X?" 21:15 Designing Magic Resources 24:41 Designing Magic Power Levels 27:15 Ways to Limit Magic 29:20 Magic sh...

Daystar and Alexander discuss what makes a magic system, what their purpose and function is, and some of the pitfalls and challenges to creating effective ones that enhance storytelling rather than distract from it.

Daystar and Alexander discuss the Rule of Cool trope, and how rational fiction tries to create organically cool moments without sacrificing the story's integrity. Timestamps: 0:40 What is the Rule of Cool? Is it inherently good or bad? 5:45 Swords vs Guns, Lightsabers, Waif-Fu 11:07 Why avoid it in Rational Fiction? 13:00 Ways to minimize negatives of Rule of Cool 19:20 Breaking the world 26:40 Is...

What are the pros and cons of writing fanfiction, and what types of fanfiction work best to inspire rational fiction? Timestamps: 0:40 The Three Types of Fanfiction 3:13 Examples, and where Rational Fiction falls 5:27 What are the pros of writing Fanfiction? 7:38 How do Daystar and Alexander find it useful? 9:25 Con 1: Limited Audience 12:18 Con 2: Expectations from Canon 14:39 Con 3: Lack of Prof...

In a world where "everything is a remix," what's so important about originality, and how can you help your writing be original?

Daystar and Alexander discuss what tropes are, why they exist, how they're often used (or misused) in fiction, and a few ways to avoid bad tropes in rational and rationalist fiction.

A brief history of the Rational and Rationalist fiction genres, their roots in the LessWrong community, and the influences from flagship authors of HPMOR and Luminosity.

Webserial authors Daystar Eld and Alexander Wales share their thoughts on what rational writing is, and describe the Rational and Rationalist writing genres.