Columns

Interactive Storytelling In Video Games: How Much is Enough?

April 12th, 2013

With the triumphant debut of BioShock Infinite, storytelling in video games is once again a trending topic of discussion. It is a subject LitReactor has covered in the past—our own John Jarzemsky wrote about the various story possibilities presented by videogames not too long ago. The one unique thing the format can do that even the best novels or movies can only mimic is allow the audience to not just participate, but directly interact with the story.

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Library Love: Five Libraries In Film You'll Never Forget

April 12th, 2013

Libraries are a popular setting for so many things. Fashion shoots, sex videos, TV commercials—you name it. I’m probably biased, but I find library scenes in film to be unusually memorable. Sometimes, they are the most memorable part of a film. Who can forget Robbie and Cecilia’s library tryst in Atonement? Film excels at conveying atmosphere, and the library serves as a blank slate on which to project a mood. Libraries can be creepy, intimidating, warm, inviting, or simply mundane.

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There is No Bottom, There is Only The Abyss: A Hubert Selby Jr. Primer

April 11th, 2013

Transgressive Fiction: “A literary genre that graphically explores such topics as incest and other aberrant sexual practices, mutilation, the sprouting of sexual organs in various places on the human body, urban violence and violence against women, drug use, and highly dysfunctional family relationships, and that is based on the premise that knowledge is to be found at the edge of experience and that the body is the site for gaining knowledge.” —Rene Chun

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Storyville: Ten Ways to Avoid Cliches and Stereotypes

April 11th, 2013

One of the ways that you can stand out as an author is to write original fiction, to have original ideas. There are a lot of different genres that have traditions rooted in certain content and form, but that doesn’t mean you have to stick with them. Here are ten suggestions for how you can avoid stereotypical stories, characters, plots, formats and other aspects of great fiction.

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Talk It Out: How To Punctuate Dialogue In Your Prose

April 10th, 2013

Punctuating Dialogue Dialogue is one of my favorite things to write, and I wish that my job as a technical writer offered more (or any) opportunities for writing it. In prose, dialogue can be a great way to get inside your characters. However, some writers find punctuating dialogue confusing: How do I use quotation marks? What is a dialogue tag? Where do the commas go? How come I see writers who don't even use quotation marks? Wait, is that an em dash?!

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Workshop Tips For Mobile Users: How To Critique on Tablets and Smartphones

April 9th, 2013

In case you didn’t know, LitReactor offers a pretty excellent Writer’s Workshop, a place you can go for critiques and advice from fellow writers. Just upload your flash, short, or long form fiction and wait for other members to submit their reviews. I won’t get into the finer points of how it works, so if you’re not familiar with this side of the site, definitely go check it out.

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You Are What You Read: The Nutritionist's Guide to Readers

April 9th, 2013

Image via Free Images How do you read? We posed the question on Unprintable Episode 9 and discovered we had some questionable habits when it comes to book consumption. Listen to the cast to find out what Josh, Rob and I admitted to and in the meantime decide where you fall on the dietary spectrum of reading types:

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Book vs. Film vs. Audience: The Shining and Room 237

April 8th, 2013

The Book vs. Film vs.

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Recap: Game of Thrones 3.02 - Dark Wings, Dark Words

April 8th, 2013

This is going to contain spoilers for this episode, and also for the books. I won't tell you what happens in the fifth book, or what I think is going to happen in the next episode, but I will talk about differences between the book and the show thus far. Deal with it.

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Top 10 Storytelling Cliches Writers Need To Stop Using

April 5th, 2013

Header image by Viridiana O Rivera Cliché is the enemy of good writing.  We, as writers, are trained to kill clichéd phrases in sentences. But that's not the only place they can hide—they can infect the spaces between the words, too. Clichés can infect storytelling techniques.

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