I’m a Trekkie. I fell in love with the franchise during the Next Generation era and regularly went to the theater to see the feature films in the 1990s.

However, during J.J. Abrams’ reboot films, I gradually lost interest. When Discovery was announced, I decided to give it a try—but I stopped watching after two episodes. I never even checked out the other “new” Star Trek iterations. Maybe I will someday.

Even though I haven’t seen the latest attempt to revive the franchise—the Starfleet Academy series—I can already understand why so many people seem upset about it.

From the clips I’ve watched and the reviews I’ve read, it appears that the established brand has once again been used as a mask. Behind that mask is something that doesn’t feel like the Star Trek many fans once knew. Instead, it seems to contain stories the creators wanted to tell anyway—stories that might not attract much attention without the Star Trek label attached.

The problem with this approach is that it may buy you a season or two, but eventually fans recognize that, despite the branding, they aren’t really getting Star Trek. At that point, interest fades, and the show gets cancelled and the movies become busts.

We’ve seen this happen before—not only with Star Trek, but also with other major franchises. The pattern feels familiar enough that it’s easy to predict where Starfleet Academy might be heading.

That said, I hope I’m wrong. I still love Star Trek and want future series to capture what made it so special in the 1990s. But again, I haven’t watched a single episode of Starfleet Academy, but the online discussions surrounding it seem to echo the same concerns seen in other modern franchise shows.

The broader lesson for storytellers is: Write your own stories. Create your own worlds. Develop your own characters. If a story can’t generate interest on its own, attaching it to an established franchise won’t magically make it compelling. It will just expose weak writing and destroy the fans’ love for the franchise itself.

Brands like Star Wars and Star Trek have endured for decades. Whether they can fully recover from this era of horrible storytelling remains to be seen.

What a great first half this movie had. It was novel, sharp, suspenseful, and all-around compelling. Beautiful storytelling and confident filmmaking. And then… the second half began.

I’ve always liked movies with a limited setting. Constraints often force creativity. Try writing a story in which no one can speak. Imagine a story that takes place entirely inside a car. Or one that features only a single character.

Limitations like these instantly spark curiosity and suggest a strong, focused premise.

Heretic takes a similar approach, limiting its setting to a single house with only three characters. And for about an hour, the filmmakers execute this premise wonderfully. I was genuinely on the edge of my seat, eager to discover where it would all lead. Framing a classic captivity-horror scenario within a theological debate was a refreshing idea. It gave the film a unique identity. Well done.

But after that first hour, everything slowly falls apart. The tension weakens, the focus blurs, and we’re left with a lackluster resolution in the final ten minutes. To bring the story to its conclusion, the film even abandons logic and internal consistency, relying on one deus ex machina after another.

Heretic is a great example of a story built on a strong — perhaps even brilliant — idea that works beautifully for half a film, only to lose its way because the ending can’t live up to the premise.

And that dynamic makes Heretic feel like a let down despite it being one of the best movies of the last couple of years.

Having a great idea is winning half the battle. But if you can’t carry that idea through to a satisfying conclusion, your audience will feel betrayed.

Interestingly, the opposite can also be true. The movie Barbarian, which operates in a similar genre, had the reverse effect on me. During its first half, I was close to losing interest. But then the story took a bold and unexpected turn, delivering a much stronger second half. When the credits rolled, I didn’t feel disappointed — I felt rewarded.

The lesson is simple: Once you’ve found a great idea for a story, don’t fully commit to developing it until you’ve found an ending that is just as strong — or even stronger.

Because in storytelling, how you finish often defines how your audience remembers the whole experience.

I watched the third installment of the Knives Out franchise yesterday—and I liked it. It’s a good movie, and even one of the better films of the year. It’s obvious that everyone involved had a lot of fun making it, and that Rian Johnson is a smart writer.

Yes, he messed up Star Wars—but only because Kathleen Kennedy allowed him to. Johnson’s filmography proves time and again that he can write clever, original stories. Wake Up Dead Man is a great example of his ability to deliver smart, well-constructed plotlines.

That said, the one thing that almost made me give up on the movie was the first act. It’s simply too long. More than half an hour passes before we get the first murder victim. After that, the movie really picks up steam and keeps you on the edge of your seat. At times, it’s downright brilliant—just like the first two Knives Out films. But I can imagine some viewers dropping out during the first act because it drags a bit.

The best way to get people interested in your story is to start with a bang. Throw the audience straight into the action—just like Tom Cruise does in every Mission: Impossible movie.

Of course, you need to develop the plot and characters at some point, or you won’t have a story at all. But first, you have to capture the audience’s attention before they’re willing to invest in your character and plot development.

As great as Wake Up Dead Man is, I would have started with the murder and then used flashbacks to convey the plot and character development that’s crammed into the first act.

Still, I liked the movie—a lot—and I highly recommend watching it.

I was hesitant to publish my first book in 2023. In fact, I was so hesitant that I kept it on my computer for years, even though it was already finished. I felt the same hesitation with my second book in 2024—and my third in 2024 as well. I guess, that feeling of “It’s not good enough” never really goes away.

After publishing three books and nearly a dozen short stories, I’ve come to an important conclusion: if you aim for perfection, you will never publish anything. Of course you should try to produce your best work, but if you obsess over perfection, no sentence will ever feel good enough—and you’ll never release anything at all.

What’s better: publishing a book that is “good enough,” or never publishing a book because it isn’t perfect?

Another thing to keep in mind is that even if you did reach perfection, some readers would still disagree. There are people on Amazon who give The Lord of the Rings one-star reviews. There are people who downvote YouTube videos of babies playing with puppies. Some crazy people rate Christopher Nolan movies 1 out of 10.

The lesson here is: Your idea of perfection will never be everyone’s perfection.

Since universal perfection is impossible, why try to reach it? Aim for creating a book that is good—and then release it instead.

With all of this in mind, I’ve established my third iron rule of writing: If something is finished, publish it. If you don’t, you’ll get stuck in editing limbo, endlessly trying to “fix” something that can’t be fixed anyway.

To sum up the iron rules so far:

1. Collect all ideas.
2. Work on one idea until you have a first draft.
3. Publish everything that is finished.

This year, I set a goal to write at least one thousand words every day. So far, I’ve managed to stick to it. On most days, I wrote even more. Writing stories for my books and articles for this website give me a strong reason to keep going—and once you do it long enough, habit takes over.

I don’t even think about whether I should write today; I just do it, because I’ve done it long enough that it has become a natural part of my daily routine.

So, does writer’s block exist? I don’t think so. At least I’ve never experienced it.

If I look at writing from the perspective of quantity, the only times I get stuck are when I start thinking too much about quality. Not every article I write and not every page of a book is perfect. Sometimes I even write complete trash.

But writing trash can still lead to quality. Here’s why: if you can’t produce something good today and you stop writing, you certainly won’t create anything of value tomorrow. But if you keep writing—even if it’s garbage—quantity will lead to quality almost automatically because you keep putting words on paper.

If you try writing 1K a day for an entire year, you will learn something about writing. Even if you only learn it subconsciously. And this will improve your quality afterwards. So just writing more and more will make you better. You only have to stick with it and never give up.

Here are a few guidelines I use to continue writing daily:

• When I write fiction, I follow one rule only: just write, without editing. Editing is only allowed after the writing part is finished.
• When I get an idea for a story, I write it down, no matter whether it seems good or not. When I finish a story, I review my swipe file and choose the next idea that’s promising enough for a book or a blog post.
• When I write non-fiction, I always create a simple outline before I start which are basically just sub-headlines. Writing then becomes a matter of connecting the headlines I planned in advance.
• I keep a swipe file for non-fiction as well, so I never run out of blog post ideas. It already contains more concepts than I could possibly turn into articles in my lifetime.
• Use ChatGPT for feedback: You can’t type in “write me a book” and expect good results. But you can use ChatGPT as a Beta reader who is always available and delivers quick and targeted feedback.

These guidelines have helped me avoid writer’s block entirely. I can confidently say I haven’t experienced it once this year. And I’m convinced you won’t either if you follow these four simple rules.