Columns

How to use Family Dynamics to Bring Your Characters To Life

April 24th, 2020

Many writers talk about the authorial toolbox when trying to explain certain methods to achieving technical and narrative excellence. Tools are important. They provide the storyteller with implements that cut, measure, and smooth the shape of the tale. To borrow George R.R. Martin’s analogy, both the gardner and the architect require skills that have proven effectiveness. Tools that are both sharp and fine, trusted and heavily practiced. They cannot only be learned about in an abstract sense, but they must be gripped by the writer’s own hand; used regularly.

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Storyville: Writing a Compelling Novel Synopsis

April 24th, 2020

Yes, this is a huge pain in the ass. Writing a synopsis—in various lengths—can be very difficult, but it’s essential to nail down in order to communicate with agents, editors, and publishers. Here are some tips on how to make your synopsis really stand out, and what I think are the essential elements for your proposal.

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What Writers Can Learn From Watching The NFL Draft

April 23rd, 2020

This is it. This is my last attempt to bring Sports Twitter and Writer Twitter together. I can’t believe LitReactor is letting me do this article. This is like my dream article. I love sports and I love writing, and man, I love the hell out of a good sports metaphor for writing. This is really happening. LitReactor has made my dreams come true.

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Maybe: The Empathy-Building Writing Prompt

April 22nd, 2020

Can you get over it when some jerkoff spills your drink? When your neighbor’s dog shits on your lawn and they don’t have a bag? Can you be a more empathetic person? Can you deal with the assholes you don’t like? Can you channel anger and frustration into something positive? Maybe.

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The Resurrection of Sylvia Plath's "Ariel"

April 20th, 2020

Header image by Leza Cantoral Ariel is a notorious poetry collection that is often interpreted as one long suicide note, a sort of burn book of all those in Sylvia Plath’s life who did not know how to love her and did her wrong. As a confessional poet, her burns go inward as well as outward. She takes painstaking inventory of her own shortcomings, inviting the reader into her dissociative mind, her dark obsessive thoughts, her nightmares, her petty jealousies, her endless yearnings for a deeper kind of experience.

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Celebrate Teen Literature Day with These Five YA Authors

April 16th, 2020

As a writer and voracious reader of young adult literature, I find lit for teens to be incredibly important. Not for me (though I do find it entertaining and I love it to death); I think the reason lit for teens is so important is in the name — it’s for teens.

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The Gabino Iglesias Online MFA: First Semester

April 15th, 2020

Original image by mentatdgt I got tired of seeing writers take classes they don't need, so I'm opening an MFA program. It will be online because nothing's worse than a workshop where you have to look at the faces criticizing your work... especially when theirs is atrocious. In any case, I know grammar, syntax, and worldbuilding, to name a few, are elements that writers need to learn about, but I think you can get really good at all those by writing and reading like your life depended on it.

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10 Horror Bookstagrammers You Should Be Following

April 14th, 2020

If you are not familiar with the wonderful world of #bookstagram on the Instagram app, let me get you caught up as quickly as I can. There are readers all over the world who have dedicated their Instagram account to posting photos of the books in their collection. Much of what you’ll find is bright, sunny book worms who love contemporary literature, mainstream or traditionally published books and Young Adult fiction.

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Comics vs. Television: "Locke & Key" — Skip The Show, Read The Comics

April 13th, 2020

I’m not surprising the world by saying, “The book is better.” I know this is not mind-blowing news, but in this case it’s news you need to hear. Not because the series of comics by Joe Hill is better, but because the comics are MUCH better. And because so many plot points carried over in the show, you really can’t watch the show first, then read the book. If you watch the show, you’ll ruin the much better experience of the book.

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Why Genre Writers Should Read Poetry

April 10th, 2020

Original header images via Sofia Garza & Andrea Piacquadio Before Rian Johnson became a symbol of the last decade’s nerd cultural proxy war, he made a great neo-noir-YA film called Brick. Joseph Gordon-Levitt plays a loner who still knows all the highs school cliques and uses them to help find his lost girlfriend. I relate to the character in how I interact and intersect with all the macro and micro literary scenes.

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