Probably one of the most repeated bits of advice to writers in classrooms and workshops is “show don’t tell.” For example, rather than just telling the audience, “Joe was angry” it’s largely considered better writing to show that Joe is angry through his words or actions. “Joe slammed his fist down upon the table,” for example, would be showing us that Joe is angry without directly addressing the reader. Continue reading
I started watching Jessica Jones recently and I’ve got to say it’s an excellent show. In case you haven’t seen it, I won’t spoil it by revealing anything big. In this post, I mainly just want to discuss the opening scene in which we see Jessica Jones taking still pictures of a cheating spouse in a parking lot. It made me wonder, is this what private investigators actually do all day? Continue reading
Legion is my favorite new show right now. I won’t give a recap of it here, but I wanted to talk about something a character says in the opening of Season 1, Episode 4. Jermaine Clement breaks the fourth wall by directly addressing the audience. Continue reading
If you read through a lot of submission guidelines (or get a lot of rejection letters) like I do, you’ve probably had an editor tell you that if you want to increase your chances of getting published with them, you should read past issues of their magazine/podcast/whathaveyou before submitting. Continue reading
When I first started reading Don Juan by Lord Byron, I was expecting a long boring epic poem. Surprisingly, Don Juan is actually a satire and it’s full of humor. My summary probably won’t be as funny as reading the poem for yourself since I’ll mainly be providing punchlines without all of the set up, but we’ll see how it goes. Continue reading
We get a large variety of stories in this collection. We get an amnesia-based version of hell, a story in which people start blinking out of existence, and a story in which a man finds a portal to another world in order to confront his dead wife who was unfaithful to him. There’s a story about a girl trying to reconnect with her zombie brother, another story about a girl trying to bring her vampire brother back to life, and a short story in which a father and son go on a hunting trip (but they’re not hunting deer). Continue reading
Mania Delight 