Eleven
Stranger Things, the Platonic ideal of contemporary 80s nostalgia, burst onto the scene back in July to instant popularity and very little critical examination. Thereafter, it has rapidly assumed a […]
2016
Three Weak Conflicts
Conflict makes or breaks a story. A strong conflict grabs readers and keeps them engaged; a weak conflict leaves them bored and uninvested. Very often, when readers love the premise […]
What’s So Great About Supergirl
Supergirl debuted into a crowded field of superhero television to good reviews but an underwhelming audience response. As it gears up for season 2, let’s take a look at why […]
Reducing Word Count: It’s Not about the Numbers
Reducing word count sometimes feels like the holy grail of revisions. Countless blog posts make long lists of words that you should ruthlessly excise from your manuscript, ranging from “really” […]
Writing Without Motivation
This post is part of the Writers Write All Blog Hop hosted by A Writer Named Charley. Thank you for organizing, Charley. One of the hardest shifts I had to […]
An Introduction to Damsels in Distress
The damsel in distress is one of the oldest and most pervasive clichés in fiction and also one of the most reviled. So wide is the knowledge that damsels in […]
Causal Realism and Jared Leto’s Joker
Ever since those first stills of his character design, Jared Leto’s Joker has left many of us scratching our heads, trying to figure out why the portrayal seems so wrong. […]
Pokémon Go: An App for the Modern Flâneur
Pokémon Go has created a new class of urban pedestrians, and as I watch them walking to hatch eggs or loitering around lured PokéStops, I have one overwhelming impression: Nineteenth-century […]
The Measure of an Alien
It’s a curiosity that Star Wars and Star Trek are so often grouped together when they’re so patently different in themes, appearance, and format. The differences can be obvious or […]
Haircuts: A Tale of Katz and Valya
My discussion of fictional haircuts leaves out one possibly pertinent fact: I included a dramatic haircut in my own novel Among the Red Stars. So I’m going to talk about […]