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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 just 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.
Read Column →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
Read Column →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.
Read Column →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.
Read Column →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.
Read Column →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.
Read Column →Why Is The Rolling Stone Cover Controversy Even A Controversy?
July 18th, 2013
The internet lost its collective shit yesterday after the cover for the latest issue of Rolling Stone was released. It features Boston Marathon bombing suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, to accompany a story written by Janet Reitman. This is what it says at the bottom of the cover: The Bomber: How a Popular, Promising Student Was Failed by His Family, Fell Into Radical Islam and Became a Monster
Read Column →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.
Read Column →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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