Cédrick Irakoze

Discombobulating: “Animals are more humans than human beings” Disclosure: I am frank. I tried hard to retract this statement and apologize as some of my pals wanted me to do. I failed. I am not denying, for a second, the goodness of some people, the kindness that goes beyond expectation, the love expecting nothing in return, the ‘planting trees in whose share people do not plan to sit’ ideology, the Ubuntu. I am informed. I am a big fan of humanity and brotherhood. But no, it ain’t enough.  Some people called me names after I said the above statement. I didn’t take offense, I was a fiction writer, and my head was used to receiving eggs thrown its way, just as any writer who isn’t afraid to speak up on unpopular subjects and in unpopular ways.  Every year on April 7, Rwandans and the country’s friends commemorate the 1994 genocide against Tutsis, one of the most horrible in recent human history that took around 1 million lives. Now, the country is in its 100-day commemoration p...

The Underrated Pandemic The novel coronavirus period has shown the world so many other things that people barely knew or just ignored. Among other things, another pandemic that had been underrated was unveiled: Fake news. (Un) fortunately, this disease, not treated in labs and medical rooms, was not that very much known. Due to the global pandemic, his company, Infodemic, also spread around the world. Some people came to take it more seriously, at least, not just in some parts of the world. There is, therefore, a shared responsibility to feed the world with healthy information. A virus unveiled his elder kin. Some wars don’t get enough attention until those who cry do it louder, louder enough to get to everyone’s ears in the remote milieus. Is it always because the fights are less worrying that they don’t get enough attention? Not necessarily. Oftentimes, we need the wind to intensify the turbine to finally realize that it was there. From Wuhan, a city in the Hubei provin...

FOR WRITERS AND EDITORS ONLY :) One of those genuinely interesting articles about a subject that is rarely tackled for reasons oftentimes interpreted as selfish, ignorant or impotent. Some fiction geeks will thrust your sealed novice hunger of HOWs and WHATs in creative fiction or non-fiction writing in the stop-and-never-remember-to-ask-this-again dustbin.  Gary Smailes played the same card with a different technique and conviction. He compiled this amazing and so inspiring aricle that I personally think is worth sharing here. Don't get me wrong, it's Gary Smailes, one of my best editors ever. Here we go... As usual, I am going to illustrate one technique, or best practice, that you can apply to your future writing projects. Today is a long one. I’ve been working on this article for a few weeks but thought that it was an important topic worthy of the 3000+ word count. So, today, I want to talk about narrative viewpoint. One problem I see on a regular basis,...