Columns

The Insane True Story of How Doctor Wesley Snipes Wrote His First Novel

August 18th, 2017

Ray Norman was just about finished with the day’s writing when someone kicked in his office door and stormed inside. The man, dressed in black and carrying a sword, looked exactly like Blade, only a little older. “You look exactly like Blade,” Ray said. “Only a little older.” The man grinned. “What a coincidence!” He gripped the sword with both hands and swung it at a ficus plant in the corner of the room. The blade bounced off the bark like it was made of plastic. “For that is exactly who I am.”

How a Close Reading of 'Catch-22' Recreates the College Classroom

August 17th, 2017

When one of us professional English majors finally escape from university life, we do tend to get nostalgic for how books are read when they’re assigned. It’s not always easy to engage with a text on your own, especially when it’s an older book or one that’s a challenge. Once you’ve re-read the Harry Potter series for the umpteenth time, you might think your brain could use a little flexing. So you sit down with James Joyce’s Ulysses and realize it’s nearly impenetrable.

Avoiding Stereotypes When Writing Place (Even If That Place Is Home)

August 16th, 2017

The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly of the Shitty First Draft

August 15th, 2017

Right now, I’m revising a shitty first draft of a short novel. It’s a pain because I pretty much have to rewrite the whole thing, but what's great is I don’t have to think too much about the plot. I’m switching the POV from third person past tense to first person present tense. I’m focusing more on the language this time around, because I know my story and my characters. I am experiencing the best and worst parts of writing a shitty first draft.

Should Stephen King's "Rage" Return to Print?

August 14th, 2017

In Stephen King’s Rage, a high school student with a gun shoots his algebra teacher and takes a class of high schoolers hostage. King wrote the book when he himself was in high school. He let it sit, and after he’d published half a dozen bestsellers, he rewrote Rage and had it published in paperback under the Richard Bachman pseudonym. The book sold decently, and then it pretty much went away, as most books do. Then:

Writing the Crime Scene: Murder or Suicide?

August 11th, 2017

"I just want to make sure that nobody did the suicide to him." — Detective James "Jimmy" McNulty, HBO's The Wire

Beneath the Terminus Stone: Borderlines as a Theme

August 10th, 2017

Towards the end of the writing process, during the third or fourth draft, say, we’re really dealing with a world, a cast of characters and a series of events that we’re at home with: on a fundamental level we know these people and these things. We might even love them, even the villains. Especially the villains. There will still be a few little surprises awaiting us, story-wise, and who knows, we might even make enormous changes at the last minute. Which is very scary. But the heavy lifting is done, and we’re now attending to the final details.

Book vs. Television: What TV's Sheriff Longmire Is Doing Wrong

August 10th, 2017

The Walt Longmire Mysteries by best-selling author Craig Johnson debuted in 2004 with The Cold Dish, and since the release of the second book in 2006, Death Without Company, a new installment has come on the heels of the previous each year. A television series based on the books premiered in 2012, and survived a switch after its third season from the A&E network to Netflix. A sixth season is set to air in September and there’s been some buzz about a movie follow up.

When Reality Gets Tough, the Tough Get Reading

August 9th, 2017

In a college literature class, a professor spoke negatively about using books as a form of escapism from reality. I took that hard, assuming he meant we should never take a break. We had to be fully engaged in reality, 100 percent of the time, or we were living life wrong.

The World in the Skull: A Story’s Environment

August 9th, 2017

One of my best friends is a film maker. We’ve skirted around the idea of me writing a script for him for a number of years now, but it never seems to happen. I remember one reason why he thought I wasn’t exactly suitable for a particular project: “You’ll start world-building.”