In this amazing short by UK filmmaker Tom Jenkins, a lonely desk toy longs for escape from the dark confines of the office, so he takes a cross country road trip to the Pacific Coast in the only way he can – using a toy car and Google Maps Street View. This is stunning.

Watch:

When you meet someone, before anything comes out of their mouth, appearance is what you judge them by. It’s the reason why Mom nags you to tuck in your shirt, to shave, to floss, to brush your teeth and attempt to smell nice –– it makes a difference. In fiction, appearance isn’t nearly as dire as in real life because often times you can introduce a character without having to describe him or her. You can just have them talk. But, there is always room to add some color to that person.

When used right, appearance is a subtle of way of revealing character in fiction. Everything someone wears presents some aspect of his or her inner selves. Body types, clothing and jewelry all lend hints to a character’s values and when molded correctly, allow readers to better understand a character, to see him or her clearly in their minds.

When constructing a character, you should consider how you want them to dress, what they would look like if you saw them walking down the street. Say your protagonist is a man. Does he wear a suit or jeans? If jeans, are they baggy or skintight? Are the rips in the jeans stylish or do they scream he needs a new pair. Are his eyes narrow or wide? Too big or too small? Scars? Tattoos? Piercings? Read more »

It has been a tough year, 2010.  It has been a year where we saw the economy continue to crumble, the environment destroyed by an oil spill, and Christine O’Donnell.  And after all of that, most of the country is paralyzed by an unexpected blizzard just as we try to ring in a new year.

There is a bright spot out there, and it’s taking the form of humor writing.  What better way to usher in 2011 than with books that can actually make us laugh?

Read more »

A lot of writers I know are really weird people. They are not conventional characters. They are introverted, awkward, and often act like wallflowers in social situations, taking mental notes rather than fully participating.

But the holiday season is the great leveler: even the weird ones have to get together in groups with family and/or friends to eat, drink, and exchange gifts.

But writers also have the chance to do their own version of a holiday tradition: the New Year’s Resolution. This is the one time of the year in the U.S. when it is socially accepted even sanctioned to talk about self-improvement. So why not take this somewhat cheesy and unrealistic tradition of promises and make it a literary goal? Why not recommit to your own writing? Why not do more reading? This is a good way to stay weird, since pretty much everyone else’s resolutions will have to do with losing weight and exercise. Here are a handful of literary suggestions:

Read more »

The Brainstormer is an innovative, free web-based idea generator for those plumb out of ideas, so now you have no excuse not to write. At the spin of a (virtual) wheel, the Brainstormer churns out a combination of objects/phrases/ideas, like “colonial dwarf in flight” or “pool hall involving fidelity and enlightenment.” Is it the stuff of great ideas? Uh, maybe. But at least it pushes you through that first hurdle of forcing yourself to actually sit down and write.

For those on the go, it’s also available as an iPhone app.

[Via GalleyCat]

I am a perpetual optimist, especially on the issue of literature in the digital age. I believe that the Internet presents a number of wonderful new ways to create and distribute literature, and I firmly deny, deny, deny when faced with the all-too-ubiquitous argument that the Internet is killing the book.

One point on which I will concede, however, is that the screen is changing the way we think. After spending eight hours at a computer and simultaneously listening to music, checking Twitter or Facebook (more often than I ought to, I should note), answering emails, editing video, or whatever it is that I’ll end up doing on a given day, suddenly I feel very distracted when faced with an open book. Reading a book can be jarringly simple after a day of multitasking and multimedia; when your brain is trained to process multiple streams of information at the same time, at lighting speed no less, sometimes it can be difficult to focus on just one thing.

So for those people, there’s Teleportal Readings, a monthly web video series made for “those who love reading but readings.” Or, I’d like to add, for those who love readings but think that video recordings of them are terribly dull. Watch what a little green screen hoodoo can do for literature:

Read more »

I don’t mean to rehash the whole “is-the-MFA-degree-in-creative-writing-useless” issue, but I do want to suggest some solutions to one of the commonly cited arguments against getting an MFA. [Full Disclosure: I'm getting my MFA at Columbia University.]

I’ve often heard that MFA programs produce cookie-cutter writers. Because students are all taught by the same professors, reading the same assigned readings (most often, from the mainstream canon of literature), and critiquing each others work within a closed loop, they end up all sounding like one another and like the influences that are hoisted upon them within the courses.

Like I said, I don’t intend to rehash this debate. Instead, I want to propose some solutions I’ve come up with.

If, in fact, people come out of MFA programs sounding like “MFA-ey writers,” with cautious language, similar influences, and a lack of risk and experimentation, here are some ideas of how to diversify your influences while in an MFA program and avoid robotic writing:

Read translated literature. Read works in English by authors from other cultures, countries, languages, and periods of time. Bring in some of that foreign-ness into your English. Push the boundaries of what English is expected to be able to do. Or hell, if you have the skills, just read non-English works in their original language! Certainly the majority of people around you aren’t doing this in most traditional MFA programs.

Translate literature yourself, if you have sufficient language skills. In the process, you’re forced to become super acquainted with another author (do one you admire) and you’ll end up soaking up some of their literary influences, ones that stand outside of the English stuff everyone else is reading.

Read things that might not be categorized, necessarily, as literary. What about the works of oral history by Studs Terkel and Svetlana Alexievich? In reading those transcriptions of monologues by people who survived the Great Depression and the Chernobyl disaster, I learned a lot about dialogue, tone, being sparse, and forcing myself to cut out the unnecessary fat of my paragraphs.

Maintain ties with writers, editors, and friends who are good readers of your work outside of the MFA program. Have people outside your program read your work. Go to readings of people who aren’t your classmates. SheWrites is a great online community for women writers, for example.

Get a part-time job (or dreaded internship) that exposes you to worlds beyond the classroom. Try journalism. Try teaching. Be a grant writer. Work as the editor for a literary journal. Obviously easier said than done, especially in this (transitional) job market.

Take classes or workshops in other genres! Be friends with writers across genres! This is a big one, I think. Who says you can only write in one form? Challenge yourself to try out other forms, and even if that’s not your style, allow the tools and tricks you learn from one to inform the other. Sentences in literary nonfiction have to sing just like they do in poetry. Side note: I found that teaching multi-genre creative writing to high school students made me confident enough to try writing fiction for the first time in years. If I can teach it, hell, I should be able to do it.

Any other ideas?

Thanks to Idra Novey for some of the ideas about translation.

A good flick once in a while can do you some good

There are a lot of ways in which college students spend their free time. Personally, I watch films. There’s nothing better than a good flick on a boring day. Last year, I probably rented out half the selection in the library and paid a ton of late fees (and accordingly got a Netflix account this year). I love films because they take me away for a couple hours, like a good novel. They inject fear, inspiration, laughter, knowledge and a whole bunch of other things into my day. And as a writer, they teach me a thing or two.

Before I jump into the benefits of watching good films, I really need to define what I mean by a film, or better yet, what I don’t mean. A film is not the summer box office hit you took your girl to. It’s not the action flick with explosions every two minutes and it’s not the drama with the played-out lines any half-conscious person can see coming a mile away. Don’t get me wrong, I dig those movies too––I’d watch Megan Fox in Transformers any day of the week––but that’s not what I’m talking about. Read more »

There is a place where great screenplays go to die.  Dialogue that had been analyzed for days – three or four words that had been written and rewritten to get the feeling just right – can meet its gruesome death on the lips of an unprepared actor that wasn’t right for the role to begin with.  That beautiful moment between the protagonist and his mother (a pivotal point in their relationship where they realize they can get along after all) dies in the arms of a gaffer who is also the assistant director and script supervisor and doesn’t know how to light a scene for shit.  An emotional monologue meant to soften our views of a villain isn’t even given the chance to live because it seems the audio file was deleted when the stressed director/editor realizes he is out of memory and formats a hard drive prematurely.

While I’ve seen many screenplays that were terrible on their own before it hit the set of a student film, I find that even some of the best scripts I’ve read can suffer under the often stressful and hectic conditions of a student shoot.

So, when a student film comes out that was not only able to preserve the integrity of the original screenplay but goes so above and beyond that it should really no longer be labeled a student film, a nice round of applause isn’t really enough.

Adriano Valentini graduated from NYU’s undergraduate film program in 2008 – the same year he produced his short film, Clubscene, about a turning point in the life of twenty-something Montreal bartender, Gabe.  I had the pleasure of reading the script before it went into production and held my breath in hopes that the shoot would do the script justice.  Adriano turned out to be as good at directing as he is at writing and the movie went on to receive the Wasserman/King Finalist Award and NYU’s First Run Screenwriting Award the following year, allowing Adriano to present his film at the DGA Theater in Hollywood.  He chose not to abandon the project upon graduation like many film students do and continued to work with the characters of Clubscene, releasing even shorter short films focusing on one character at a time – specifically “The Bartender” and “The Underager.”  His hard work was rewarded with The Bartender becoming an official selection at the Brooklyn International Film Festival this year and becoming a finalist for The Chris Columbus/Richard Vague Fund to pursue directing a feature.

Perhaps it’s envy or perhaps it’s awe, but something was needling me and prompted me to find out what goes on in that brain of his.  What set Adriano apart from the other students (myself included)? Below, we talk a little about inspiration, the writing process, cultural influences, and how the characters make the story: Read more »

How much is a Kangamouse really worth?

How much would you pay for this adorably bedraggled kangamouse? A dollar? Less? What if it was a gift from a soldier in Vietnam to his two young sons back home, a gift that they worshipped alternately as “The Great Faa,” and as “Mr. Peepers” — and a gift that ultimately divided the family and lead to an exorcism via toilet? That seems worth a little more than a dollar, right? That’s because there is a certain value to stories, to histories; this is why people pay thousands for certain baseballs or comic books, this is why experts on Antiques Roadshow can tell people with a straight face that their ancient button collection from the civil war, with letters to prove its authenticity, is worth more than my car.

Read more »