Writing Archives - Westin Lee

The Pause: Let’s define that one filler dialogue choice format

Westin Lee — Wed, 07 Oct 2026 16:51:22 +0000

"How are you feeling? You took a nasty fall back there."
1. Not great.
2. Ow! My head!
3. Where am I?

Seen one of those? That's The Pause. A narrative design verb that's usually bad that I've been forced to acknowledge can have value.

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‘AI’ for Professional Writers: Navigating the Circus Part 2

Westin Lee — Thu, 13 Feb 2025 21:06:52 +0000

In Part One, we looked at the basic technology underneath modern “artificial intelligence,” along with possible use cases professional writers see across industries. This also lengthy part will explore the business of AI, as well as my favorite developments in the public eye. We’ll finish with some predictions and recommendations, as if my hot takes will be good and valuable.

Again, no one else went to the trouble of writing something like this, so now I have to do it.

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‘AI’ for Professional Writers: Navigating the Circus Part 1

Westin Lee — Thu, 30 Jan 2025 17:03:01 +0000

Here we are in 2025, years into the current generation of AI technology. We’ve been inundated with hype at a scale greater than the last five tech industry hype waves combined. We’ve been told all sorts of great-sounding lines about how revolutionary and inevitable this technology is, especially for creative endeavors like writing.

But is it?

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Three Underdog Game Narratives You Missed in 2023

Westin Lee — Fri, 22 Dec 2023 15:00:04 +0000

We made it. There's SO much digital ink online right now for the myriad huge, incredible games that came out this year. So I wanted to highlight interesting narrative experiences I had from places that might have flown under your radar. Maybe the game was smaller, or the situation was weird and no one [...]

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The END of Learning from Evangelion

Westin Lee — Tue, 09 Aug 2022 00:38:07 +0000

Learning From Evangelion MORE Learning From Evangelion I knew I'd end up paying to listen to an Evangelion podcast eventually. The Get Played trio started an anime podcast, and I was delighted and unsurprised to learn that, like me, Heather Anne Campbell is a huge Eva nerd. If you're a fan, I recommend you check [...]

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Phasers, and when to get into that sweet Star Trek technobabble.

Westin Lee — Fri, 24 Jun 2022 17:41:00 +0000

I was just watching the latest episode of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds (which is a pretty great show, even after just six episodes), and there was a moment with a bit of phasers technobabble. Something in the vein of "target their engines, minimum yield." Okay, point made in the dramatic sense. They don't wanna [...]

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Thematic Integrity: Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan

Westin Lee — Wed, 08 Jun 2022 00:08:00 +0000

I told a younger friend Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan was a good way to jump into the franchise. Then, in a late-night, wine-fueled moment of paranoia, I re-watched the movie to make sure it holds up. Good news: it does. It's a great film. Not as many LED volumes as modern Trek [...]

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Arcane – 10 lessons from the Netflix show

Westin Lee — Wed, 24 Nov 2021 15:34:00 +0000

Just finished watching the first season of Arcane on Netflix and...I was surprised how much I absolutely loved what is ultimately: a video game adaptationof a game that I played for yearsthat I couldn't remember two story or lore beats from* So perhaps, just like I did with Neon Genesis Evangelion, we can put on [...]

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Writing the Perfect Fight

Westin Lee — Thu, 08 Oct 2020 16:39:00 +0000

I've become somewhat known as a person who writes solid action, so I thought I'd share some thoughts on 'fight scene theory'. In other words, what do I think I know about how to make fights in stories dramatic and compelling? This theory is the result of a process I call 'modeling' - that is, [...]

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Half-Life: Alyx and Thematic Integrity

Westin Lee — Mon, 06 Apr 2020 15:59:30 +0000

Yay, I have an excuse to talk about the new Half-Life game. I played through the original Half-Life in software mode on my parents' old Pentium 2 machine. I played through its sequel on my PC shortly after I graduated film school way back in 2005. I still remember the immensely satisfying, filmic ending of [...]

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