Columns

Polishing the All-Important First Fives

October 7th, 2015

It’s no surprise that beginnings are hard. When you finally find your manuscript in the hands of an editor or agent, you want to make the best first impression you possibly can—and fast. A lot of times that means within the first five pages, but focusing on the first five sentences, or even words, of your manuscript can help you get over that hump and make the reader want to move further.

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Do It Right, Write Plotless Reviews

October 7th, 2015

Nobody needs a book summary from you. Sorry.  You can find a book summary anywhere. There's a whole flap on the cover that summarizes the plot. There's the Amazon description. There's the Goodreads reviews. There's a white bar at the top of every electronic screen where you can type in the title of a book and then see what happens. There are plenty of summary options. We don't need your book summary.

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Five New (and Newish) Horror Markets for Short Fiction

October 7th, 2015

Fall is upon us. Just in time for Halloween, I thought I’d give you a reason to send out some short story submissions. Maybe dust off that piece you've been meaning to finish but didn’t think there’d be a market for. Or maybe you need an excuse to write something horrifying and new. 

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4 Things the Wild Success of 'Mr. Robot' Can Teach Us About Writing

October 5th, 2015

A few weeks back I wrote a column explaining what we could learn about storytelling from the failures of True Detective Season 2. Today's column is dedicated to another series which aired on television about the same time as TD2. Like TD2, this series breaks many of the conventions we associate with primetime drama. But where TD2 failed, this series triumphed. Spectacularly.

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When Critics Are Assholes: 8 Great Books That Got Slammed

October 2nd, 2015

As those brave, astute writers who have taken my LitReactor class “Everyone’s a Critic” know, I think smart criticism is as essential as good food. But like truly great cooking, not everyone can produce it consistently. Sometimes we get it wrong. Very wrong. There are times when, I’m forced to admit, we critics are just plain garden-variety assholes.

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What Works & What Doesn't: 'The Texas Chainsaw Massacre'

October 2nd, 2015

Welcome back to What Works & What Doesn't. In the previous two installments, we discussed "The Story Triangle" as outlined by Robert McKee in his fantastic screenwriting book Story: Substance, Structure, Style, and the Principles of Screenwriting. First we explored the tenets of a Classical Design or Archplot via Robert Towne's classic Chinatown; next, we examined Minimalism or Miniplot by analyzing Sofia Coppola's wonderful Lost in Translation.

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UPDATED WITH WINNER - LitReactor's Flash Fiction Smackdown: September Edition

September 30th, 2015

Flash fiction: A style of fictional literature marked by extreme brevity Welcome to LitReactor's Flash Fiction Smackdown, a monthly bout of writing prowess. How It Works We give you inspiration in the form of a picture, poem, video, or prompt. You write a flash fiction piece using the inspiration we gave you. Put your entry in the comments section. One winner will be picked and awarded a prize.

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Why You Need A Writing Uniform

September 30th, 2015

In school we used to have these writing assessments. A teacher would sit you down, give you three topics to choose from, and tell you to get busy on a five-paragraph essay. Here were the topics that always came around: school lunches, whether students should be allowed to wear hats in school, and of course, school uniforms. For the record, the correct responses were: gross, yes, and who gives a shit?

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Fiction Shmiction: The Complex Question of Writing as Activism

September 29th, 2015

Over a year ago, I explored a topic that is central to the way I think about stories and the role of writers. In short, I believe that stories create the world we live in by shaping the beliefs and assumptions we hold about the "way things work," and that this in turn changes our behavior in dramatic ways.

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12 Productive Ways to be Unproductive

September 28th, 2015

At a bookstore event several years ago, I briefly met Norton Juster, author of The Phantom Tollbooth. He read some of his work aloud, then took questions from the audience. When asked how he made time to write the book, he replied that he didn't. The entire thing, he told us, had been part of an elaborate attempt to procrastinate on completing work assigned to him by his day job. Ever since hearing that, I've had a soft spot for procrastination.

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