Columns

Four Questions With Bree Ogden, Instructor For 'Intro To Graphic Novel Writing'

January 6th, 2012

A few weeks ago I was queried with a graphic novel. The premise sounded wonderful and I immediately dove into the five sample chapters that were pasted into the body of the email. A few paragraphs into the sample chapters I thought to myself, “wait…isn’t this supposed to be a graphic novel?” Unfortunately, it was completely written in prose and I couldn’t consider it as a graphic novel.

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LURID: The End Of The World As We Know It

January 6th, 2012

Image via Pexels LURID: vivid in shocking detail; sensational, horrible in savagery or violence, or, a twice-monthly guide to the merits of the kind of Bad Books you never want your co-workers to know you're reading.

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The 10 Best Book To Movie Casting Decisions

January 6th, 2012

As the release of Fincher’s adaption of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo is upon us, I find myself wondering if Rooney Mara can possibly nail the wild carelessness and single-minded survival instinct of the protagonist, Lisbeth Salander. I have high hopes for her role, but I find it hard to believe that she’ll approach the transformative performance given by Noomi Rapace in the 2009 Swedish film.

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The Pompous Fool As Narrator

January 5th, 2012

The world is not how it used to be. Things have changed for the worse and I bet you, dear Reader, are complicit with this.

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Down With The Double Tap! (Why You Shouldn't Space Twice After Sentences)

January 5th, 2012

Do you hit the space bar twice after you type a sentence?  If you do, you should give some thought to stopping. 

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Writing Effective Dialogue

January 4th, 2012

Header images via Jopwell & Miguel Á. Padriñán The most memorable writing takes advantage of the faculties of human speech. Of all the narrative forms, dialogue is the most human in design. Unlike description or narrative, dialogue requires a person’s presence. As such, it’s intrinsically empathetic.

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Ask The Lit Coach: 'Can You Publish Your First Novel If You're Broke?' and More

January 3rd, 2012

Over the past three swift moving years, we've witnessed significant changes in the publishing world. Despite the many publishing options available to writers today, some things are still worth the time and investment (book publicity), while other things are not necessarily important (an author blog). One thing that hasn't changed though, is the importance placed on the quality of the work. 

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LitReactor Staff Picks: The Best Books of 2011

December 30th, 2011

We may have only gone live in October, but the staff here at LitReactor are a bunch of voracious bilbliophagists who have been steady readin' all year long. So we figured engaging in a some year-ending listrionics would be a great way to play catch up, and would give you a better idea of who we are as readers. Who knows, we might even turn you on to something new. Hope you enjoy.

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The Top 10 Book to Film Adaptations That Were Actually Good

December 29th, 2011

Original image by Bence Szemerey As the years go by and Hollywood becomes more and more bereft of ideas, filmmakers are increasingly turning to the literary world for inspiration. This is not a new phenomenon of course: anybody reading this column can probably remember jumping into a conversation about the latest blockbuster by looking down your horn-rimmed glasses and intoning, ever so smugly: “…but the book was way better!”

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The Changing Character

December 29th, 2011

Here’s a question I hear a lot in writing workshops: do characters have to “change” throughout the course of the narrative? Do they have to learn something or evolve in some way by the story’s end? Or can they just continue unfettered, behaving the same as before?

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