Columns

Storyville: Dramatic Structure and Freytag's Triangle

July 18th, 2013

Quite often people ask me about the essential elements of a short story (or novel)—what are they missing, why does it feel incomplete, is there a reason it doesn’t resonate when it’s done? Most likely, they are missing one or more of the essential dramatic elements. So let’s discuss them in detail and see what we can do to improve your writing. I’ll be talking about short stories here, but you can apply all of this to novels as well.

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8 Predictions On the Future of Digital Publishing

July 17th, 2013

We've reached the digital frontier of book publishing, but the implications of living in this new territory are not yet fully understood. If anything's certain it's that the next couple decades will see major changes in how we think of books, publishing, marketing, and maybe even writing itself. Here are eight of my predictions about the future of digital publishing.

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TripLit: Drinkin’ At The Drive-in

July 16th, 2013

A column reviving car trip games with a literary twist. Bust out your map app, it's time to go on a trip.

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10 Places We Read (and Why We Read There)

July 16th, 2013

Hi there, my name’s Ben. I’m one of the new guys here at LitReactor. For my first article I wanted to conjure up a subject that’d aim for the personal, but also strike up a great conversation within the community here, as it pertains to all of us readers. The subject in focus herein is one I’ve often thought about, occasionally talked about, and never once written about.

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Why The F*ck Aren't You Reading Sara Gran?

July 15th, 2013

Why The F*ck Aren't You Reading? is a new feature where the columnist spotlights a writer who has a dedicated following and is well known within the writing community, but hasn't achieved the elephant-in-the-room style success of a Stephen King or Gillian Flynn—But they deserve to, dammit! Hopefully the column will help gain the author featured a few more well deserved readers. Let’s get a quick show of hands: How many of you read Nancy Drew and the Hardy Boys growing up?

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7 Horrifying Ailments Named After Literary Characters

July 15th, 2013

Photo by Rob Krause

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Magna Monstra: 10 Giant Monsters of Fantasy

July 12th, 2013

Monsters. They’re one of the greatest parts of Fantasy, one of the features of the genre. Monsters are, simply put, freaking cool. Anyone who ever cracked open a Monster Manual (or perhaps the Fiend Folio) and flipped through its pages knows what I mean. The best monsters are powerful, scary, and just plain weird.

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Choose Your New Adventure: The Resurgence of Interactive Storytelling

July 12th, 2013

True story: About ten years ago, a friend and I were talking about how to get out of a job we both hated (we were destined for great things and we knew it!) and one of us said we should launch a series of Choose Your Own Adventure type books, but for adults. We discussed how awesome and amazing we were to have thought of this. But we were lazy, so we laughed and went back to our menial tasks. What fools we were! We could have been on the cutting edge of what has become a Choose Your Own Adventure-like revolution.

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Keeping Up with Sandman Slim: A Recap

July 11th, 2013

Later this month, Kill City Blues, the fifth book in the Sandman Slim series by Richard Kadrey, will be released. For those unfamiliar with the books, they follow the exploits of one James Stark, also known as Sandman Slim, amateur magician and supernatural warrior. For those people familiar with The Dresden Files, the series has some surface similarities, but it’s as if someone took Harry Dresden, dipped him in booze and cigarette smoke, dropped him down to Hell, kicked him round the dirt some, then dragged him back up with a bad attitude.

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Library Love: MOOCs – An Ivy League Education For The Masses

July 11th, 2013

Fast, radical change is pretty rare in higher education. If you attended a traditional brick-and-mortar college or university, chances are, current students are sitting in the same classrooms, eating in the same cafeterias, and living in the same dorms as you did. Those dorms still suck. The format for college instruction is largely unchanged as well: the professor lectures at the front of the classroom, and students pretend to listen while doing something else, like updating Facebook.

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