Columns

5 Realty Listings That Could Be Your Character’s New Home

February 27th, 2015

Sometimes a setting has so much personality, it begins to read less like static background and more like a main character. The space inside Thoreau’s cabin projects a sense of calm and solitude, hobbits are nearly inseparable from their holes in the ground, and where would The Shining be without the Stanley Hotel? Atmosphere is a crucial element in storytelling, regardless of genre. But what if you’ve spent your life in a condominium with white walls? What if you’re trying to push out a novel from a suburban ranch with all the panache of lint?

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Why Six Figure Advances Will Destroy the Publishing Industry

February 26th, 2015

Yesterday I saw this tweet.

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Product Review: Musemee Notier V2 Stylus

February 26th, 2015

Just over two years ago, I wrote a column for LitReactor called Paperless Writer: Five Steps To A Successful Digital Rewrite. In it, there was mention of my preferred tablet stylus, the Pogo Sketch Pro, because of its lightness and thinness. Well, times change, and now there's a new love in my life: The Musemee Notier V2. Why?

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Your Favorite Book Sucks: 'The Giving Tree' by Shel Silverstein

February 25th, 2015

I can hear you thinking it. Not The Giving Tree. It’s a timeless children’s classic. Many (myself included) have warm and fuzzy memories of our parents reading it to us as we were tucked into bed, and many more no doubt continue to read it to their own children. The story of a tree’s love for a little boy taught us about friendship, selflessness, and how to exploit them. That’s right—The Giving Tree is nothing but a book of terrible relationship advice for children.

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Storyville: Making Relationships Feel Real in Your Fiction

February 24th, 2015

Today we’re talking about how to make the relationships in your fiction feel real. There’s nothing worse than reading a story about a couple and thinking, “That would never happen.” Or, what about a father-son argument or sibling rivalry that feels out of whack, lacking authority and coherence? Let’s talk about romantic relationships especially, but other relationships as well—what you can do to make them feel layered, truthful, and unique.

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The Seven Deadly Sins of Dialogue

February 23rd, 2015

Ursula K. Le Guin has said that scenes with dialogue are where emotion happens in fiction. According to the emerging body of neuroscience on fiction, such scenes are also where fiction most clearly approximates actual lived experience, that "vivid and continuous dream" of which John Gardner spoke.

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LitReactor Community Spotlight: February 2015

February 23rd, 2015

I just woke up with this computer in my lap. Apparently, I had decided it was time to do another community update, and then... I can't remember. Whatever it was, my room looks like Michael Bay was in charge of decorating, and I have a new contact in my phone under "Zeeby the Flying Guy." Also, I am fairly certain that this isn't my mattress. February, right?

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10 Great Loose Film Adaptations

February 20th, 2015

I'm sure you've heard the term before in reference to movie translations of literary texts: loose adaptation. As bookish people, those two words can make us cringe sometimes, because we assume if an adaptation of a novel we love is loose, then it will undoubtedly be a "lesser than" experience, retaining none of the source material's awesomeness.

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Jane Austen reviews ’Fifty Shades of Grey’ by E.L. James

February 19th, 2015

Bubble image via Ruffles and Restraints As well as writing six novels on the subject of love and marriage, Jane Austen kept up regular correspondence with her family, including her niece, Fanny Knight, who once asked her for advice on whether she should marry for love.

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Stop Laughing at Yourself: A Loud Legacy of Exclamations

February 19th, 2015

To repeat a quote that basically everyone on earth has heard already, F. Scott Fitzgerald once said that using an exclamation point “is like laughing at your own joke.” We’ve all known that person who suffers from inappropriate exclamation overuse. They sprinkle in an extra punctuation mark at the end of every paragraph, even with an occasional audacious smiley face dotting the tails of two in a row.

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