Why even bother? That’s a question perhaps worth asking of the written word. We have movies, we have television, we have videogames. Why go to the trouble of reading at all? It’s a lot more effort, with a lot less—well—production value. Movies are single, big, events. Explosions (literal and figurative) and grandiosity galore. Television shows … Continue reading The Written Advantage
The Faceless Artist
Who is the artist behind this piece? Is the individual male or female? What ethnicity? If we were to imagine that individual’s story, what might it be? How would their tale unfold? Regardless of the artist you’ve envisioned, it’s important to consider how our conception of an artist comes into formation. If I told you … Continue reading The Faceless Artist
Ego-Less Writing
A writer, above all other professionals, ought to be self-aware. Nothing is more detestable than writing that is hypocritical. To prevent hypocrisy, a writer ought to walk the talk. She ought to wield truth like a sword and hack away at herself—especially at those parts of herself that would inspire ridicule in any reasonable reader. … Continue reading Ego-Less Writing
What Bathos Can Do for Your Short Fiction
We all know the drill: exposition, rising action, climax, falling action. This is the formula for basic stories and a successful plot line, proven to be effective and hard to stray from as a writer. And yet, in attempting a climactic moment, writers often get stuck in the mires of melodrama, falling prey to contrivances … Continue reading What Bathos Can Do for Your Short Fiction
Lessons on the Power of Concision from Yasunari Kawabata
In judging this year’s flash fiction contest entries, I couldn’t help but be reminded of Yasunari Kawabata, a master of the form. Yasunari Kawabata was a Japanese writer who, in 1968, became the first Japanese author to receive the Nobel Prize in Literature. While he is likely better known for his novels, such as Snow … Continue reading Lessons on the Power of Concision from Yasunari Kawabata
How to Pretend to Have Read Books Without Really Trying
Like most college students—and like all who wear lens-less glasses—I entered freshmen year entirely assured I was uniquely well-read. My first year taught me three important things (in addition to imparting on me the wisdom that lens-less glasses picked me out as uniquely unlikeable): First, my taste in books was not unique (however at the … Continue reading How to Pretend to Have Read Books Without Really Trying
On Reading What You Want To and What You Don’t
I often find myself wondering why I’ve come to enjoy the things that I do. The literature that I prefer to consume occasionally has acknowledgeable intellectual or literary merit, but more often than not, it is not “capital L” literature. It’s very lowercase L. It probably has elves in it. Or spaceships. And I’m not … Continue reading On Reading What You Want To and What You Don’t
Essay: Are you there, “The New Yorker”? It’s me, every hopeful college writer.
College writers are desperate creatures, yearning for attention and audience. Hungry for praise, popularity, and even infamy, we all seek that fix—the sweet glory of publication—to validate those hours upon days upon weeks spent with head bent in humble supplication to whatever god may grace us from within the void of the blank, white page. … Continue reading Essay: Are you there, “The New Yorker”? It’s me, every hopeful college writer.
Essay: Sci-Fi and the Trick to World Building in Creative Fiction
Sci-Fi. An abbreviation that has the power to invoke utter joy or disgust given the beholder of the topic. I personally used to be one of the blind that discredited this genre as gimmicky and meritless. Though I appreciated the concepts and imagination, I never considered anything even faintly classified as science fiction to be … Continue reading Essay: Sci-Fi and the Trick to World Building in Creative Fiction
On the Intellectual Merits of Genre Fiction
We all know genre fiction. Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter are the most well-known examples, but most any fantasy (Eragon, A Song of Ice and Fire) or science fiction (Ender’s Game, Dune) counts. These kinds of stories, while many are popular, are rarely if ever touted in academia, and often lack credibility in … Continue reading On the Intellectual Merits of Genre Fiction
