Columns

It's Made Of SCIENCE: Writing Characters That Are Smarter Than You

July 25th, 2013

When I was about nine or ten, I had gotten myself involved in playing the Pokemon card game at the local Books-a-Million. I remember observing a match between two boys of the same age, and one of the players whipped out a Pikachu card. This wasn't the normal Pikachu card; it was special, with unique art, abilities, and a little star logo. It was a promo card included with a magazine subscription. But I couldn't place the word "promo." I knew it was an "-omo" word. What was a common -omo word I had heard at school?

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Tigers and Telepaths: An Alfred Bester Primer

July 25th, 2013

Alfred Bester is one of those icons of science fiction who isn’t widely known outside of genre enthusiasts, and yet he’s a writer who deserves more recognition. Though his output wasn’t as voluminous as some of his contemporaries, the works that he left behind are solid masterpieces of science fiction. The Demolished Man won the first Hugo Award for Best SF Novel. The Stars My Destination didn’t receive any awards, but is perhaps his most accomplished and appreciated work.

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Best Practices When Dealing With File Types

July 24th, 2013

LitReactor is a writer's community, so it's likely most if not all of you have submitted a story for publication in a lit journal or magazine in the past. This also means, unfortunately, there's a good chance you've run into some mind-numbing formatting issues, specifically maintaining your manuscript's prettiness when dealing with multiple file types. See, every editor requires you send them the format they most trust and use.

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Pond or Ocean: A Review of 'Ocean at the End of the Lane' by Neil Gaiman

July 24th, 2013

The Ocean at the End of the Lane is Neil Gaiman’s first adult novel since 2006's Anansi Boys. Ocean draws from Gaiman’s childhood, telling the story of a man who returns to the place he used to live on the day of a funeral. He finds himself at an old farmhouse looking out over a pond there and thinking how Lettie Hempstock, a girl he used to know, referred to it as “the ocean.” This precipitates a journey back through memory to a time when he was seven years old and first encountered Lettie and her strange family.

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Culling The Classics: The Catcher in the Rye

July 23rd, 2013

It is alleged that there are over eight million books available on Amazon.com. Eight million. That means that even if you read one entire book per day for 100 years, you'd still only be 0.4565% of the way towards reading everything that Amazon has to offer. And that doesn't include any books that might be written next year, or the year after that, or any other of those 100 years. And remember, that's ju​st Amazon. There are plenty of harder to track down old, out of print, and foreign works that would have to be added to the list as well.

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Is 2013 The Year of the Graphic Novel?

July 23rd, 2013

Arguably, we've already had the "year of the graphic novel." I'd give the title to some other arbitrary year, whichever year we were in when it became "cool" to like, read, or just know about "graphic novels." Certainly there's been a ton of critical acclaim for graphic novels as an art form for a long time, whether you want to go back to the Pulitzer Prize winning Maus by Art Spiegelman, or talk about more recent successes like Alison Bechdel's 2007 memoir Fun Home, or David Mazzucchelli's much beloved Asterios Poly

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Storyville: 15 Unconventional Story Methods

July 22nd, 2013

Have you ever sat down to write a short story, or even a novel, and thought to yourself that the same old stories have been told over and over again, there is nothing new to say, and no new way to say it? Well, maybe you need to break out of your conventional storytelling mode and try something different. Here are a few ways that you can tell a short story, or even a novel-length one, that are a little less common than the traditional linear first or third person narrative. Take some chances, experiment a little bit, and see what happens. It could be fun.

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A Taxonomy of the Strangest and Most Unexpected Goodreads Groups

July 22nd, 2013

The best part of the Internet is that there’s a place for any interest. It doesn’t matter if you’re into succulent pine needle recipes or horseback minesweeping, there’s a site somewhere that caters to you.

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Iron Giants: A Big Robot Top 10

July 19th, 2013

As mentioned in one of my previous columns, this month sees the release of Pacific Rim, the movie about giant robots versus giant monsters. Over on the Fantasy side of things I looked at some of the best giant monsters in popular culture. Here, however, on the Science Fiction side of things, we’re going to look at Giant Robots.

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Dystropia: Examining the Trope of the Manic Pixie Dream Girl

July 19th, 2013

Somewhere situated between Easter Island and Papua New Guinea, perfectly pinned on a straight line between the Great Pyramid and the Nazca Lines lies the Isle of Dystropia, the place where every cliché and worn-out convention sticks out like rubble in the sand. Pawing through the debris, you'll find the trope that may just make or break your story. Each installment, we'll explore a different literary platitude, examining it for its various strengths and weaknesses. Set sail for Dystropia, where you might just learn something about your writing and yourself.

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