Writing a story is like old-school Tetris. And we’re talking Game Boy Tetris here. Grey pixels on greeny-yellow background. No block “ghosts” to show you where your drop will end up. None of this T-spin-to-win nonsense. Back in my day, the tetronimos were heavy and froze the instant they even looked…
One of the many valuable experiences of my high-school education was being part of my school’s improv team. The Canadian Improv Games are a tournament for high school students who perform improvisational theatre. Teams of students compete in four out of five 4-minute-long events in which they’re given prompts from…
Everyone knows that romance novels are for women. And so are stories that focus on who’s hopping into whose bed and which couples will end up together. Everyone also knows that those kinds of stories are inferior. Why would anyone who’s not a woman want to watch (ugh!) The Notebook…
Gamification is a big idea these days. People in a variety of fields realize that games — often video games in particular — have a lot to teach us, whether it’s how to deal with a deranged computer forcing us through ever-more-dangerous tests or that bards can be spoony. When…
It took me twenty-nine years to discover that I didn’t hate pink. When I was a girl growing up, pink was the enemy. It invariably designated toys I did not want to play with, clothing I didn’t want to wear, and games that bored me. I was happier when I…