Hollywood loves navel-gazing. It’s a long-held truth. Every year Tinseltown releases a slew of movies about making movies, whether the film within the film is fictional or factual. So I’m rather surprised that a silver screen adaptation of Stephen Rebello’s Alfred Hitchcock and the Making of Psycho has been such a long time coming. The 1990 non-fiction book has been very well received over the years, as it’s infinitely readable, meticulously researched and wonderfully enlightening.
…99 out of 100 screenplays I read [aren't] good enough… When you read a good screenplay, you know it – it’s evident from page one. The style, the way the words are laid out on the page, the way the story is set up, the grasp of dramatic situation, the introduction of the main character, the basic premise or the problem of the screenplay – it’s all set up in the first few pages of the script. — Syd Field Screenplay (1979)
Flash fiction: A style of fictional literature marked by extreme brevity.
Welcome to LitReactor's Flash Fiction Smackdown, a monthly bout of writing prowess, in which you're challenged to thrill us in 250 words or less.
How It Works
We give you a picture. You write a flash fiction piece, using the picture we gave you as inspiration. Put your entry in the comments section. One winner will be picked, and awarded a prize.
As the year draws to a close, it's only natural that we all take a moment to reflect on what we've done in the past 366. (Leap year!) Personally, I had successes and setbacks both personal and professional. And yet, one of my biggest accomplishments -- seriously! -- was providing a safe online space for people to extrapolate the plots of forgotten Science Fiction novels based solely on their covers. I didn't expect Guess The Plot to be my legacy, but I'm certainly not complaining either.
Every month, Unprintable will take an irreverent look at books, the publishing industry, reading, writing, and more; featuring the know-it-all geekery of LitReactor columnist Cath Murphy, Senior Editor Rob W. Hart, and Managing Editor Joshua Chaplinsky.
Rob Hart is the associate publisher at MysteriousPress.com. He's the author of The Last Safe Place: A Zombie Novella. He's written about the publishing industry at Salon, and his short stories have appeared in Shotgun Honey, Needle, Thuglit, Reloaded, Kwik Krimes, Crime Factory, and Helix Literary Magazine.
Earlier this month I had the opportunity to attend the World Fantasy Convention in Toronto. The World Fantasy Convention is a gathering of publishing professionals and fans who generally celebrate fantasy fiction. This year I participated in a panel on the idea of the Eternal Wanderer. Also appearing on the panel were authors Patrick Rothfuss, Robert V. S. Redick, David Levine, and Stefon Mears.
If you had told me six months ago that the superhero comic I would be most excited about was a monthly featuring Hawkeye in his off hours from being an Avenger, I would have laughed in your face. For starters, I don’t read a ton of Avengers books and even if I did, I’ve never cared one bit about Hawkeye. In fact, my only significant feelings about Hawkeye since the Avengers movie released was grouchiness that he was getting his own ongoing comic while the Black Widow got a (really crappy) mini-series.
Maybe it’s an inevitable result of our western value system, but a lot of writers have a tendency to put their characters on a sort of sliding moral scale. “Good” characters on one end, “bad” characters on the other.
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