Columns

Storyville: How to Write a Massive, Multi-Pronged Hook

October 14th, 2021

If you think the only hook to your story or novel is the first line, then boy do I have some news for you. In order to engage the reader you need to hook them not just once, but as many times as you can, so there is no way they can escape. How do you do that? It starts with the title, and then expands to the first line, the first paragraph, the first page, the first scene, and the first chapter (if writing a novel). Let’s get into this, so we can figure out how best to hook YOUR readers, no matter what genre or style you might have.

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Red Flag Books

October 13th, 2021

A few weeks ago I saw someone on Twitter refer to Fight Club as a “red flag” movie. You can see the tweet in question here. 

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How Pitch Wars Showed Me Where I Need to Grow - As A Person

October 12th, 2021

This was supposed to be a positive article, an uplifting look at the benefits of Pitch Wars outside of just getting selected. I was going to talk about how the deadline of the submission period forced me to put my head down and work, and crank out a book when I might have otherwise dilly-dallied endlessly. I wanted to shine a light on the community-building aspects of Pitch Wars, which are honestly great.

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Candyman: A Monster Named 5 Times

October 11th, 2021

We had Clive Barker’s short story: Candyman Then we had a trilogy of movies: Candyman Candyman Candyman And now, with Candyman (2021), we’ve said his name for the fifth time: Candyman

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Lessons from 10 Years of Writing About Grammar

October 8th, 2021

10 years ago, I made my LitReactor debut with an article about brainstorming story ideas for National Novel Writing Month (aka NaNoWriMo). I find this hilarious now since I only ever did NaNoWriMo once—in 2010—and I’ve never done one since. Not because it’s not a great idea, but because I had my first kid in early 2012 and I haven’t had 2 minutes to myself ever since.

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LURID: Moral Panic in Poetry — A Quilt for David

October 5th, 2021

Quilt image via the Smithsonian, Author Photo via Twitter As a culture, we’re obsessed with news. We doom scroll through repeated facts and conjecture, absorbing the shrieks of the chorus, constructing a hierarchy of information based on whoever shouts loudest, and first. Then we move onto the next novelty, leaving the old one to rot, often uncorroborated, half-told, sometimes outright wrong.

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Celebrating 10 Years of LitReactor!

October 1st, 2021

Happy Birthday, LitReactor! Or should I say, Happy Anniversary? What difference does it make? LitReactor has been around for a solid 10 years now, and either way, we are celebrating! I remember our first post like it was yesterday: a news item on a HuffPo feature about our launch. In the final line of the article, author Andrew Losowsky poses the question:

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Writing with Cognitive Impairments

September 30th, 2021

I might not have degenerative dementia. That’s not as comforting as the doctor telling me that I definitely don’t have degenerative dementia, because what he’s really saying is that I might actually have it. He’s saying that because I have symptoms of degenerative dementia. As a full-time author, as a creative person, as a husband, as a father, and simply as a human being, I find this prospect troubling for a lot of reasons

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Crime and Opportunity: When True-Crime Won't Sustain A Narrative

September 28th, 2021

Image via RODNAE Productions The following is a story I wrote about the story I refused to write.

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The Wisdom of Alan Watts: Improve Your Life and Creativity

September 27th, 2021

Author photo via Wikipedia I first became interested in Alan Watts after a conversation with Matt Cardin on the This Is Horror Podcast where he recommended reading The Wisdom of Insecurity: A Message for an Age of Anxiety.

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