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Tag: writing

  • Beyond slop, taste, and AI moral panic: What social science tells us

    …slop is hardly a new phenomenon. Neither is the moral panic around it. AI-generated content is the latest iteration of an age-old trend: Whenever technology dramatically lowers the cost of producing media, it unleashes a flood of cheap, derivative work — and a chorus of critics convinced that culture has reached a new low. —…

  • Interview with Alicorn on how story conflict is optional and characters in utopia should do fewer drugs

    Casual sex and drugs are things a lot of people enjoy and utopia should have space for them, but if that’s the vision the whole thing orbits around, you’re leaving a lot of people with other tastes out, you’re not making it clear where you put the LARPers and the woodworkers and the people who…

  • The 7-Sentence NPC

    What NPCs need isn’t more lore. It’s shape. This is a tool I’m going to use to create NPCs who survive contact with play. It fits on an index card. It works for merchants, villains, allies, and authority figures. And it’s resilient under improvisation. — Read on neillwhyborne.substack.com/p/the-7-sentence-npc Info on writing durable, memorable basic characters.

  • You should write – here’s why

    You should write, not because it makes you rich or brings you site traffic. You should write because it enriches you. When you write, you generate questions, you pursue interesting curiosities, and you engage with that information. This process makes you a different person: That’s the promise: you will live more curiously if you write.…