Signature

 Fixing Rough Drafts     At the time of writing this I am on page 202 of 250 in editing my story. I'd like to share a paragraph and how I improve it. Rough drafts are by nature clunky, repetitious and poor quality but serve the important purpose of laying the bones. Now it's time to flesh them out.       " Azalyske unveiled them in the desert bramble but now of withered brown, dry, dead vines. The sun entered the final leg of its daily toil, illuminating the sky in pink and orange. Not a cloud was to be seen. Long shadows began to creep across the thorny vines in eerily shifting nets. The air still burned from the midday sun."    Several changes need to be made. "withered brown, dry, dead vines" is redundant and causes the sentence to run on. "illuminating the sky in pink and orange" is well and good but it could be better. A clever metaphor or simile would improve it. "The air still burned from the midday sun" echos the word "sun...

 Science Fantasy      Some sci-fi books, shows etc. are strictly creating a scientific fictional environment. Think Ringworld by Larry Niven or Star Trek and I must give kudos to the Trek writers for doing their homework. The show is as close to real science as the concepts can be. But sci-fi and fantasy needn't be separate genres walled off from each other. I prefer some whimsy in my sci-fi.     The best examples of this type of hybrid are The Chronicles of Amber book series by Roger Zelazny and Final Fantasy video game series. They combine things like machines with monsters and sword fighting. To make these settings plausible you need some sort of explanation as to how magic works. There's often a scientific one like FFVII's materia. In the future I plan to have my own Signature series.     One pet peeve of mine though is why use swords when guns are superior on so many levels? Guns exert more force with less effort, greater range...