1. Use the time of a total stranger in such a way that he or she will not feel the time was wasted.
2. Give the reader at least one character he or she can root for.
3. Every character should want something, even if it is only a glass of water.
4. Every sentence must do one of two things—reveal character or advance the action.
5. Start as close to the end as possible.
6. Be a sadist. No matter how sweet and innocent your leading characters, make awful things happen to them—in order that the reader may see what they are made of.
7. Write to please just one person. If you open a window and make love to the world, so to speak, your story will get pneumonia.
8. Give your readers as much information as possible as soon as possible. To heck with suspense. Readers should have such complete understanding of what is going on, where and why, that they could finish the story themselves, should cockroaches eat the last few pages.
Every time his Photoshop crashes, filmmaker/developer Garrett Murray emails an original (and bitter) piece of flash fiction to the company instead of a crash report, spawning a genre which Mediabistro has dubbed “crash report fiction.”
The Great Gatsby: classic novel and video game. I’m embarrassed to say I’m geeking out about this:
Join Nick Carraway as you explore the mansions and bungalows of Long Island, the parlors of New York City, and the heart and soul of the Roaring Twenties. Attend extravagant parties and lush gatherings as you dance the Charleston with a happy couple harboring scintillating secrets. Sip bootleg gin with a mysterious millionaire desperate to bring the passions of the past into the present in Great Gatsby, a fun Hidden Object game.
Aaaand to get you through the rest of the week, here is the Old Spice Guy (or someone who looks a lot like him, anyway) promoting libraries: Read more »
that picture is awesome, b/c authors no longer get angry. everyone is looking coy & smart in their jacket photos. not since hunter thompson looked angry, yelling & shooting stuff. mailer looked angry sometimes, yelling & swinging his fists. maybe william vollman is now ticked off.
The photo at left was taken by two, in Salinger’s words, “shitty literary kids,” who essentially ambushed him for the sake of the photograph. “The wonder is that I have any kind of face at all left, grim or otherwise,” he said. “Piss on ’em all.”
There’s definitely a certain appeal about the “angry” writer. I don’t think I’m the only one intrigued with this idea; the Examiner recently put out a much talked about list of the best “author vs author put-downs of all time.” Maybe the “angry writer” appeals to us because in an oblique way the idea reminds me of some of the literary greats–yes, Salinger, and also Hemingway and Vonnegut and Twain, among others–writers who generally didn’t give a damn about what people thought of them and weren’t preoccupied with their sales ranking in The New York Times Book Review. If only we could be so free.
Times have changed, I guess, and like deckfight said, no one really gets angry anymore. But I still get a kick whenever authors “let loose” and refuse to censor themselves. Accordingly, I’ve put together a few of my favorite “angry writer” quotes. Hope you enjoy: Read more »
Speaking of, here is an interesting interview with Kurt Vonnegut, which The Paris Review composited from four interviews done with the author over the past decade, so it’s more like an interview “conducted with himself, by himself.” Via The Rumpus.
3. If your plot is too exciting or moving too fast, enhance realism by making your characters stop for a meal at an ethnic restaurant. Describe each course and allow your characters to re-cap the plot so far.
13. Write what you know, especially you white people out there.
1. Never snack while writing; consume only complete meals – a starch, two vegetables and one serving lean protein (remember that one serving is about the size of a pack of playing cards.)
2. Marry somebody who will cook this.
9. If an irate reader should break into your home, tie you to a chair and terrorize you with selections from the cutlery drawer, think back to your most recent novel. Was its point of view inconsistent? Did you at any time make use of the second person, or urban slang, even ironically? Did you attempt to underscore the significance of an action by describing it as having been performed “to the max”? If the answer to any of these questions is yes, accept what you have coming.
Aaaaand because I love you, here is a video of a reinterpretation of Hamlet, which demonstrates how the play would have ended much differently if Ophelia had a sassy gay friend: Read more »
Even when he was designing bugspray ads, Dr. Seuss' creativity seeped in to his work
We all secretly believe that we’re geniuses. Come on. Yes we do. The problem is that the rest of the world doesn’t always acknowledge our brilliance, and as a result many of us have been forced into taking menial jobs, where we push our creativity deep down inside ourselves, hiding it away so we can get through the day. The thing about creativity though is that, much like severe heartburn, it’s not easily suppressed; I’ve always believed that if you are truly, inherently creative, your weirdness will come bubbling out into whatever job you have, whether you want it to or not.
The perfect example of this is Dr. Seuss. During the Great Depression, Seuss supported himself and his young wife by drawing advertisements for companies like General Electric, Ford, Standard Oil and NBC. We’re not talking about selling the Eight-Nozzled Elephant-Toted Boom Blitzer here; Seuss’ early ads were for more “practical” things like Ajax Cups, General Electric Convenience Outlets, Essomarine Oil, and Flit Insect Repellent. And yet, despite the mundane nature of these products, Seuss produced some incredibly creative ads, pieces that displayed just as much imagination as his later, more famous work. For example, in one of his more surreal inserts, a man roasting in the pits of hell informs Satan that if he really wanted to turn up the heat down there, he should contact GE and install electricity, while in another ad, a colorful parade of germs declare “Down With Ajax Cups” as they march into a common drinking glass. Despite it’s decidedly odd nature, Seuss’ work was quite popular; his ads for Flit Insect Repellent, which contained images of people being menaced by sinister, whimsical insects, became a cultural phenomenon long before he was famous for writing children’s books.
Art director John Gall has also undertaken a book cover redesign project. The assignment: redesign Vladimir Nabokov’s entire book covers, all 21 of them. The result: 21 beautiful specimen boxes (a lovely homage to Nabokov’s passion for butterfly collecting), each created by a different designer: Read more »
Jane Austen’s Emma comes to the big screen…in Bollywood. I am very excited to see Emma and Mr. Knightley dance and sing. For reals.
O helo thar: a good old fashioned book burnin’ at a Baptist Church in North Carolina. Books to be burned include such “heretical works” as Rick Warren, Mother Theresa, and, uh, the Bible. Book burning: ur doin it rong.
Lately I’ve been trying to expand the range of my reading material, in the interest of improving my own writing. My theory is that, at this stage of my writing career, at least a portion of what I am writing is reflective of what I’m reading.
So I’m trying to mix it up a bit by reading different authors with different writing styles, by reading different genres, and even by reading books for different age groups. Right now I’m simultaneously reading The Plot Against America by Philip Roth, a hypothetical-historical piece of literary fiction, as well as Fade by Robert Cormier, a YA book about a boy who learns to become invisible and witnesses the dark secrets of his friends and neighbors, which I originally read many years ago and am now re-reading.
My experiences with both books are obviously very different, and the juxtaposition is interesting. Read more »
Last week Vol 1. Brooklyn 
Art director John Gall has also undertaken a book cover redesign project. The assignment: redesign Vladimir Nabokov’s entire book covers, all 21 of them. 
This is your brain on books.
Lately I’ve been trying to expand the range of my reading material, in the interest of improving my own writing. My theory is that, at this stage of my writing career, at least a portion of what I am writing is reflective of what I’m reading.
