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Ents became Treants, and the Balrog first became the Balor, then the Type VI Demon (with Balor one of the "named examples") The entire Second Edition of AD&D had a lot of changes to make it "more appealing to the parents who were complaining," like the BADD idiots ("Bothered About Dungeons &...

The problem with formulae is that they look... formulaic.

I do about 80-90% of the actual writing (and 10-20% of the editing) on my phone, and reverse those numbers on my laptop.

The original idea for Superman was that he came from the future, and was what all humans would evolve to - but some tragedy destroyed the world and he escaped into the past (the VERY first version was a bad guy who didn't have a circus strong man's costume even, but that version did not resonate...

Probably on an airplane while waiting to take off.

But there was a belief, until tests made in the mid to late seventies, that we only used a fraction (10% was usually cited but I saw it listed anywhere from 8 to 25% in various sources) - and, in fact, this long-discredited theory was the foundation of the movie Lucy a few years back (which is...

Though some of the classics really blur the lines - is Hercules/Herakles strong because of genetics or magic? Beowulf never has his powers' origins explained - is he trained or just a truly impressive human specimen? Was Cu Chulainn driven solely by a strong willpower or did he have magical...

Wish I could remember the title - about ten or so years ago I read a book about an NPC in a video game becoming self-aware (he was a soldier killed and reanimated as a skeleton, who kind of rebelled against the necromancer and went off on his own); the author did not include game stats - partly...

I don't. I've been involved in superhero games since '83 and writing (amateur) superhero fiction since '93. Magic is just one possible source for superpowers - they can also come from training (and may be "more like" magic if that training is Eastern stuff like The Shadow's ability to "cloud...

The problem is a lot of consumers can't tell (or can't tell until its too late) how creative a product is. If it appeals to them, they consume it and worry about other details later.

Oddly enough, though there's nothing wrong with #2, I kind of like 3.

Yes you did - I couldn't remember that name...

Some sites are better for some types of stories - there is a long thread somewhere in the top section of the site - I think Corty did it, that lists plusses and minuses for a lot of sites, ranging from SubStack to Royal Road to Tapas to HoneyFeed to SpaceBattles.

Piracy does happen. It is common enough to be a worry, but not all THAT common. There are threads in General and Author General about some tricks for locating it... Don't have any links saved or would share some.

Either he lied or he's a bit of an idiot. Not sure which would be worse... :D

Usually the first chapter or two get a lot of activity, and then it drops to almost nothing until you hit about 20 chapters. People read one or two chapters to see if they want to see more, and then watch the story to see if it lasts long enough to be worth investing time in. At least that's...

I had a story on Royal Road "pirated" for an unauthorized audio version; that is the closest I, personally, have been to experiencing piracy, but I hear it happens occasionally. Not frequently, but there are a lot of aggregator sites that routinely try to scrub stories from places like this. I...

Sometimes, if you follow a link that looks innocent, some dangerous stuff (not just the stuff we're always warned against, like viruses, but images, links) can turn up in your History. That has gotten a few people in trouble in the past (Guitarist Pete Townsend either lied and really is a pedo...

Not sure this is true but supposedly, those DBZ fights happened because the guy behind the series needed a vacation. The publisher said "Get us four issues ahead and we can give you a full month off." So he wrote three issues that were 90% characters powering up to fight, with a little side...

If something feels important and I might forget it, I put a note at the end of the current file, usually [in brackets] and remove them when I use that section. Otherwise, I just keep everything in my head. Which is why a few stories stalled before they were posted...