Dave Eggers Created the Google-Amazon Mash-Up of Your Nightmares. Gold Fever! Deadly Cold! And the Amazing True Adventures of Jack London in the Wild. A Black Writer Found Tolerance in France, and a Different Racism. When William Gardner Smith submitted what would be his final novel, THE STONE FACE (New York Review Books, paper, $16.95), to a French publisher, his friend and biographer LeRoy Hodges recalled, the editor told Smith it was “very courageous to have written the book, but we can’t publish it in France.”
How could a courageous novel by an established writer have met with such immediate dismissal? How 'A Wrinkle in Time' Changed Sci-Fi. ‘Truman & Tennessee: An Intimate Conversation’ Review: Friendship in Focus. Merging two biographies is a solid way to enliven the often-tedious genre of the literary documentary.
But the connections drawn in “Truman & Tennessee: An Intimate Conversation” are sufficiently instructive that watching and listening to these writers is also, in a way, like hearing one author in stereo. The director Lisa Immordino Vreeland uses the friendship between Truman Capote and Tennessee Williams to construct a dialogue between them, using the writing and appearances they left behind. Jim Parsons reads Capote’s words in voice-over and Zachary Quinto reads Williams’s.
(There is a lengthy list of sources at the end; all credit to a documentary that shows its work.) For the visuals, Vreeland relies principally on archival material. Kurt Vonnegut’s Greatest Writing Advice ‹ Literary Hub. Today, if you can believe it, makes it ten years since we lost one of the greatest American writers—and, no matter how he tried to deny it, one of the greatest writing teachers.
Certainly one of the greatest writing advice list-makers, at any rate. Pocket. The best definition of a meet-cute I’ve ever heard comes from classic and important film The Holiday: “Say a man and a woman both need something to sleep in, and they both go to the same men’s pajama department, and the man says to the salesman, ‘I just need bottoms.’
The woman says, ‘I just need a top.’ They look at each other, and that’s the meet-cute.” All together now: awww. Salman Rushdie: Ask Yourself Which Books You Truly Love. The wonder tales taught me that approaches to storytelling were manifold, almost infinite in their possibilities, and that they were fun.
The fantastic has been a way of adding dimensions to the real, adding fourth, fifth, sixth and seventh dimensions to the usual three; a way of enriching and intensifying our experience of the real, rather than escaping from it into superhero-vampire fantasyland. Only by unleashing the fictionality of fiction, the imaginativeness of the imagination, the dream songs of our dreams, can we hope to approach the new, and to create fiction that may, once again, be more interesting than the facts. The fantastic is neither innocent nor escapist. 100 Best First Lines from Novels. 1.
Call me Ishmael. —Herman Melville, Moby-Dick (1851) 2. It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife. Oregon-born Beverly Cleary, beloved children's author, dies at 104. NEW YORK — Beverly Cleary, the celebrated children's author whose memories of her Oregon childhood were shared with millions through the likes of Ramona and Beezus Quimby and Henry Huggins, has died.
She was 104. Cleary's publisher HarperCollins announced Friday that the author died Thursday in Northern California, where she had lived since the 1960s. Random Name Generator. From 'Avatar' to 'Jurassic Park,' 'Beowulf' to 'Jaws,' All Stories Are the Same. A ship lands on an alien shore and a young man, desperate to prove himself, is tasked with befriending the inhabitants and extracting their secrets.
Enchanted by their way of life, he falls in love with a local girl and starts to distrust his masters. A Beginner's Guide to Different Types of Poems. The art of losing isn’t hard to master;so many things seem filled with the intentto be lost that their loss is no disaster.
Lose something every day. Accept the flusterof lost door keys, the hour badly spent.The art of losing isn’t hard to master. Then practice losing farther, losing faster:places, and names, and where it was you meantto travel. None of these will bring disaster. I lost my mother’s watch. Storied Adventures. 7 Ways Kurt Vonnegut Poisoned Readers’ Minds with Humanity. Kurt Vonnegut once said he wanted his novels to “catch people before they become generals and Senators and Presidents,” to “poison their minds with humanity.
Encourage them to make a better world.” Here are seven ways he lived up to those aspirations. In an obituary for writer Kurt Vonnegut published in the Los Angeles Times, Elaine Woo called Vonnegut “an American original, often compared to Mark Twain for a vision that combined social criticism, wildly black humor and a call to basic human decency.” The Real Reason Fans Hate the Last Season of Game of Thrones. Game of Thrones, in its eighth and final season, is as big as television gets these days. More than 17 million people watched the season’s opening. Judging by the fan and critic reaction though, it seems that a substantial portion of those millions are loathing the season. Indeed, most of the reviews and fan discussions seem to be pondering where the acclaimed series went wrong, with many theories on exactly why it went downhill. Fascinating Chart Details The History of the Alphabet.
Most of us use the letters of the alphabet everyday, but did you ever stop to wonder how their shapes came to be? The history of the alphabet is fascinating, and each of the 26 letters has its own unique story. Matt Baker (of UsefulCharts) has designed a handy poster that documents the evolution of our familiar alphabet from its ancient Egyptian Proto-Sinaitic roots (c. 1750 BCE) up to present day Latin script. The limited edition Evolution of the Alphabet chart shows how early shapes and symbols eventually morphed to become the ABCs we know today. While some letters are recognizable quite early on, others have little resemblance at all. The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction. Le Guin: Art, Information, Theft, and Confusion, Part 2. Continued from Part One i. Influence A long time ago now, discussing my book The Lathe of Heaven, I called it “a homage to Philip K. Dick” (who was then not the culture hero he has become, but a science fiction writer scorned as such by the American literary establishment, and honored mostly within the genre and in France).
E Welty on Writing etc 2 clicks. 50 Questions To Help Students Think About What They Think - TeachThought. Contributed by Lisa Chesser Using the right questions creates powerful, sometimes multiple answers and discussions. A-helpful-chart-of-facial-expressions. Paris Review - Grace Paley, The Art of Fiction No. 131. Eight Lessons Kazuo Ishiguro, This Year’s Winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature, Can Teach Us…
11 Fascinating Facts About ‘Goodnight Moon’ Writing for Visual Thinkers: Narrative Structures. Voyage to the Otherworld: A New Eulogy for Ray Bradbury. 6 Easy Steps to Unforgettable Characters. Literature Needs Angry Female Heroes – Electric Literature. The Craft of Character Development. Iraqi Refugee Empowers Youth To Share Their Stories With 'Narratio' Neil Gaiman’s 8 Rules of Writing. 10 books that will make you a better writer (and why) Last week, I wrote about 25 habits that will make you a better writer. This week, I thought — let’s dive into books. Writing Fiction: 8 Wily Tips for Setting – The Writing Cooperative. Kids explain how banned and challenged books helped them and even saved their lives / Boing Boing. General Writing Tips. Data Mining Novels Reveals the Six Basic Emotional Arcs of Storytelling. Common Mistakes and Confusing Words in English. How to Write with Style: Kurt Vonnegut’s 8 Keys to the Power of the Written Word.
Kurt Vonnegut: A Complete Rundown on Style. Daily Writing Tips. English Adjectives for Describing Physical Appearance - Vocabulary for Talking About How People Look. There's a Word for That: 25 Expressions You Should Have in Your Vocabulary. Using Evernote. Michel Foucault: “What is an Author?” Short stories.
Philosopher's Stone. Setting: Using Scene To Enrich Your Writing. 102 Resources for Fiction Writing « Here to Create. 6 Ways to Create Riveting Conflict in Your Story. 100 Useful Web Tools for Writers. Odyssey.js. How to Cite Sources & Not Steal People's Content on the Internet. Synonyms for the 96 most commonly used words in English. Make Your Dialogue More Organic. Common Words That You Should Replace in Your Writing. Important Infrequently Used Words To Know. 102 Resources for Fiction Writing « Here to Create. 6 Ways to Create Riveting Conflict in Your Story. Globe Genie. World-building. Always innovative Toronto Public Library lets us check out humans as well as books. World-building. Famous Advice on Writing: The Collected Wisdom of Great Writers.
21 Harsh But Eye-Opening Writing Tips From Great Authors. Top 10 first lines in children's and teen books. Joseph Campbell. Alan Rickman on stories. Hedonometer. How To Make An Audience Care About Your Characters by John Truby. The #1 Most Important Element In Developing Character by John Truby. 25 Things You Should Know About Storytelling. Famous Advice on Writing: The Collected Wisdom of Great Writers. Ten rules for writing fiction.
6 Ways to Hook Your Readers. TEN SIMPLE KEYS TO PLOT STRUCTURE. Cliches: Avoid Them Like the Plague. How To Write A Novel Using The Snowflake Method. Links for Aspiring Writers. 6 Ways to Make Sure Your Reader’s Brain Syncs with Your Protagonist’s Brain. Synonyms for the 96 most commonly used words in English. Dictionaries. How Walking Fosters Creativity: Stanford Researchers Confirm What Philosophers and Writers Have Always Known. What makes a hero? - Matthew Winkler. 117 Most beautiful words in the English language. Important Infrequently Used Words To Know. List of French words and phrases used by English speakers. Kurt Vonnegut’s 8 Tips on How to Write a Great Story.
The power of a great introduction - Carolyn Mohr. Three anti-social skills to improve your writing - Nadia Kalman. The Idiom Connection. Color Words. The Phrontistery: Obscure Words and Vocabulary Resources. 11 Untranslatable Words From Other Cultures. 100 Exquisite Adjectives. 100 Mostly Small But Expressive Interjections. 45 ways to avoid using the word 'very' Short Story Ideas and Creative Writing Prompts. 10 top writing tips and the psychology behind them.