The stories of Bryan Young

I've always been a big believer in the phrase, "No plan survives contact with the enemy." It's something I use as a gamemaster when roleplaying, and it's something I use when I'm plotting novels and stories. When I'm working with the characters and trying to decide what their course of action is, I have to take into account the fact that nothing should work as planned. And why should it? How often do you plan on something and have it work so smoothly that you don't need to react to variables in any way? It doesn't happen often, but when it does, it's pretty boring, right? There's no strain, there's no stress to accomplish, no drama at all... When we're writing, we're putting characters through the most interesting and challenging things possible so our readers may experience this drama vicariously. Why would we skip all of the dramatic effect of everything going wrong? You tell me: What's the more interesting of th

It's been a while, and for that I am truly sorry. Having a baby in the house after a decade is busy work. After making sure everything in that department was taken care of, my next responsibility was to keep up on my writing. I've had so many deadlines in the last month and I felt it was more important to get my writing schedule back together than to come back here and to report to you all about it. It made me think a lot about priorities, though, and it forced me to rely on my discipline. I don't think the material I wrote for the first couple of weeks after having the baby was the best work I've done. I was exhausted. Sometimes I wasn't feeling as creative as I wanted to. I was easily distracted by the fact that there was a baby around whose cheeks I could kiss. But I got through it. I hit my deadlines, I got through the stories and chapters I needed to. And I think the only reason I was able to do so was because I had become so accustomed to the daily ritua