Columns

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.

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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.

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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

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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.

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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.

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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?

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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.’

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Do or Dialect: 6 Tips for Building a Believable Voice

May 15th, 2013

The image above is based on a promotional poster I saw while in Edinburgh. It was for an event titled Scotland at the Cinema, and each poster featured a different movie quote translated into the Scottish dialect, as with the Star Wars reference above or with "Frankly hen, I dinnae gie a damn." For me, these "translations" were a reminder of how important a person's dialect is to who they are. A Walt Whitman quote comes to mind:

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Storyville: Ten Ways to Evaluate Fiction Markets

May 14th, 2013

So you’ve finally got a few short stories finished and you’re dying to send them out into the world. How do you know if a market is “good”? Here are ten tips for evaluating fiction markets—the very traits I look for when trying to decide whether or not I should send a website, journal, magazine, or anthology my writing.

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5 Dramatists as Novelists: The Joy of Reading Plays

May 14th, 2013

Image by Michael Beckwith via Wikipedia Commons Ever been to a really bad play? More specifically, have you seen a production of a play that, while clearly well-written, comes off either bland or way over-the-top in performance? This happens all the time, from high-school or university productions with little or no budget to Broadway spectacles of wealth. And for some of the greatest dramatic writers in history, this happens to their work more often than not.

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