Columns

Write Exciting Stories About Boring Things

February 10th, 2017

I’m sitting in the $2 theater watching Arrival. My mouth is full of sub sandwich because, like I said, this is the $2 theater, where bringing in a sub is overlooked because it’s better than bringing in beers. Multiple. My seat sucks because we got there just before the movie started, and Arrival is not a movie that’s meant to be viewed at a 45-degree angle. Most movies aren’t, I’m learning.

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5 Tips for Writing Short Stories That Sell

February 9th, 2017

Look at that title, huh? That's a tall order. I don't have a silver bullet that will lead you to sell every short story you've written. If I did, like most self-help gurus, I'd be taking my own advice and writing those stories myself, to add to my meager fifteen-or-so short story sales.

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Storyville: How to Put Weather in Your Fiction (Without Being Dull and Boring)

February 9th, 2017

While it might be cliché to start off a story or novel with weather, it’s still very important when building your world to include the elements—not just setting, as in architecture, and the people in your story, but the day and night, season, and current conditions. It can help to not only ground your story, but provide additional character, atmosphere, and mood. So, how can we do that exactly? Let’s chat.

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Three Secrets to a Cleaner First Draft

February 8th, 2017

Every writer knows that writing is re-writing and that the real magic of a novel happens in revisions, but if you’re anything like me, those revisions can be a really daunting task. If you’ve ever found your first drafts to be really, truly a mess, you know how difficult it can be to jump in and edit. And the messier the first draft, the longer and more complicated those edits can be.

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9 Facebook Posts by Authors We Don't Need to See in 2017

February 6th, 2017

Social media is a weird place nowadays. Between cats, politics, uneducated opinions, and selfies, Facebook is a strange land where anything and everything can happen. Unfortunately, not all of it is good. Actually, scratch that: most of it is bad. Yes, there are scientific breakthroughs, superb films, interesting discussions, hilarious memes, and fun, enlightening articles to be found on Facebook, but when it comes to authors, they sometimes tend to do a series of things that annoy the hell out of regular people and fellow authors alike.

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Time Out: Don't Write Time Travel (Unless You Do It Right)

February 3rd, 2017

Time travel. It’s such a popular, big idea. Everyone wants to put their stamp on time travel, take their swing at it. See how I used two metaphors there, one for jocks who like baseball and one for nerds who like stamp collecting? While I appreciate the excitement and enthusiasm for time travel tales, I think we could take a break, rethink some of what time travel really is, and then come back with better, more interesting stories. What do I mean?

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Pilot Breakdown: Beauty and Disarray in Westworld's 'The Original'

February 2nd, 2017

Greetings LitReactor! I’m your new columnist, Fred Venturini, and we’ll be talking pilots in this space in 2017. This week, I’m taking on Westworld’s pilot, “The Original,” which launched a much-discussed and much-watched season run and marked the unofficial start to the career of roughly 10,000 Reddit detectives. SPOILERS AHEAD

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What I Hate About Being A Writer

February 1st, 2017

When I first thought about writing a column on the many unpleasant aspects of being a writer, the first idea that came to mind was a grim catalog – a taxonomy of despair that would cover such demeaning and soul crushing things as, say, the lack of an adult income. Folks generally envy me my art. I tend to envy their more tangible assets.

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Representation Matters: A Literary Call To Arms

January 31st, 2017

Books are sometimes windows, offering views of worlds that may be real or imagined, familiar or strange. These windows are also sliding glass doors, and readers have only to walk through in imagination to become part of whatever world has been created or recreated by the author. When lighting conditions are just right, however, a window can also be a mirror. Literature transforms human experience and reflects it back to us, and in that reflection we can see our own lives and experiences as part of the larger human experience.

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Book vs. Film: 'Tony & Susan' vs. 'Nocturnal Animals'

January 31st, 2017

Nocturnal Animals. It was one of those big "must-see" movies at the end of 2016, a quasi-sleeper hit of the Christmas season, the little arthouse movie that could, despite competition from big-budget franchise behemoths like Rogue One and Fantastic Beasts, as well as standalone feel-good fare like La La Land, and video game adaptations like Assassin's Creed.

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