Columns

From Screen to Screen: 5 Mobile Screenwriting Apps for Tablets and Smartphones

May 23rd, 2013

We pay a lot of attention to fiction writers here at LitReactor, with a few nods here and there to comic authors and playwrights, but we rarely discuss the art of screenwriting. I've certainly been guilty of this oversight, having written two columns about mobile applications and practices for aspiring/established novelists. Yet I myself received a B.A. in Film Studies and took three years of screenwriting, learning the nuts and bolts of storytelling—plot points, character arcs, beats—from the likes of Robert McKee and Syd Field, rather than Strunk and White.

Read Column →

Storyville: 8 Tips For Growing Your Brand

May 23rd, 2013

You’re an author, you write stories and novels, you’re starting to get published and people are talking about you. Now what? How do you grow your brand, how do you get your image and your writing out there? How do you get people to take you seriously? Start by taking yourself seriously, and here are some ways to do it.

Read Column →

Behold The Unfilmable: Hyperion Cantos

May 22nd, 2013

I am a firm believer that doing something poorly can be worse than doing nothing at all. That is why I hope no one ever makes a movie out of Dan Simmons' Hyperion Cantos. Please don't misunderstand.  I desperately wish it were possible to make a series of movies from the four books that I believe are the greatest space epics ever written. If it were done well, it could be fantastic. It's just the "done well" part that worries me. Here are four reasons why The Hyperion Cantos should remain un-filmed.

Read Column →

Rejection: A Critical Device

May 22nd, 2013

Most writers who publish with any regularity are familiar with the soul crushing experience of sending out a story, only to see it systematically rejected by ten, twenty, fifty publications at a stretch.

Read Column →

Let's Face It, We All Live In The Same Creative Ghetto

May 21st, 2013

Writing about or from personal experience is rewarded more in many writing programs than “imagined” experience” or genre. Some of the critics of genre fiction in workshops believe genre fiction is easier to write, requires less imagination, and is not as “serious” as literary fiction.

Read Column →

Recap: Game of Thrones 3.08 - Second Sons

May 20th, 2013

This is going to contain spoilers for this episode, and also for the books. Deal with it. King's Landing "Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way." —Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina

Read Column →

Why the F*ck Do People Love Jane Austen So Much? A Primer

May 20th, 2013

Confession: I am a contrarian. My nature causes me to avoid any and all things deemed good by popular opinion. While I do trust the tastes of a few people, I generally approach all things loved by a large group of people with skepticism.

Read Column →

The Blagger's Guide to F Scott Fitzgerald

May 17th, 2013

To blag (v): to sound like you know what you’re talking about when you don’t The Blagger’s Guide to Literature (n): an invaluable resource for those who wish to blag about books without actually reading them. Do I get a blag-point for already knowing Fitzgerald was a lush and had a mad wife called Zelda? No. Everyone knows that about Fitzgerald. Null blag-points.

Read Column →

The 10 Best Star Trek Villains Ever (Besides Khan)

May 16th, 2013

As the release of the latest Star Trek sequel draws near, discussion and debate of the classic franchise’s pantheon of villains has reached an all-time high. This sudden enthusiasm for antagonists has no doubt been fuelled by the storm of speculation surrounding the identity of the vaguely teased but explicitly menacing villain portrayed by Benedict Cumberbatch. Is he John Harrison? Possibly Gary Mitchell? The legendary fan fave Khan?

Read Column →

Three Books About... Machines

May 15th, 2013

Inspire your own writing by seeing how three authors take the same material and come up with three entirely different results. "Crash" by JG Ballard It didn’t start well. The reader’s report was short and to the point: ‘This author is beyond psychiatric help.’

Read Column →