story « Storytellers Unplugged

Desperation and Impatience

By Bev Vincent, on May 17th, 2012

Several years ago, I wrote an essay for the HWA handbook On Writing Horror titled “For Love or Money: Six Marketing Myths.” While I called them “marketing” myths, in fact they were really publishing myths.

Recent events which you may already have heard about via the blogosphere inspired me to write this entry. The moral of that story [...]

The Deconstruction of Magic

By Alma Alexander, on March 30th, 2012

Not too long ago, the website www.cracked.com produced a list of <a href=”http://www.cracked.com/article_19667_6-horrifying-implications-harry-potter-universe.html“>six horrifying implications of the Harry Potter universe</a>.
They included mismatched technology and life experience (modern (our) contemporary world, buses, modern London, but steam train to a medieval castle? Wizards have never heard of or can use phones? Just what do young wizards DO, [...]

The art of (re)writing

By Alma Alexander, on November 30th, 2011

(…yes, I’m in the middle of it. Why do you ask?)

Here’s the thing. First drafts are supposed to be awful. HTat’s what they are FOR. You simply give yourself the permission necessary to WRITE BADLY if you have to, for the purpose of getting the bones of the story down on the page. There will [...]

Changes

By Gerard Houarner, on November 4th, 2011

As writers, we think and talk a lot about plot and characters, and how they form the structure of our stories.

In the past, I’ve talked about trying to approach writing from different perspectives or a different kind of “lens.” Change the camera lens and the view of the world changes a bit. (I know, stand [...]

Answering questions from an aspiring writer

By Bev Vincent, on October 17th, 2011

I recently agreed to be interviewed by a college undergrad for one of her classes. Their assignment was to interview someone working in a career that interested them. Since that interview won’t see the light of day outside of the student’s class, I thought I would post it here in lieu of my usual blatherings.

What [...]

Boxes

By Gerard Houarner, on October 4th, 2011

The following was first published in Aberrations 38, 1996, and reprinted in Nasty Snippets in 1999. Maybe more of a meditation than a story, it serves today to maintain the old site tradition of putting up something appropriate for the upcoming holiday. Hope you dig it…

In the first box, by the door, she keeps her [...]

Words count

By Bev Vincent, on September 17th, 2011

If you’ve ever read an author’s blog for any length of time, or followed his or her Facebook feed, you will no doubt be familiar with the tradition of posting sporadic or daily word counts. It is, perhaps, the only metric that writers have available to measure our productivity.

My favorite anecdote comes via Stephen King [...]

Today’s Theory

By Gerard Houarner, on August 4th, 2011

The world changes based on physical laws and dynamics; people change based on physiological and psychological processes.

How people perceive these changes and react to them is the stuff of, if not legend, certainly story.

A recent David Brooks Times article (http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/08/opinion/08brooks.html) on “The New Humanism” (which doesn’t look like the old or even current New Humanism [...]

The Rogue Gallery

By Alma Alexander, on May 30th, 2011

My own most recent experience, with a just-finished novel only now beginning to make its rounds to beta readers and agent and such, illustrates an interesting point.

Readers like rogues.

Think about a more famous situation than my own story, right now. Think Star Wars. (No, the ORIGINAL Star Wars, not the latter three abominations.) They had [...]

Reading Slush

By Bev Vincent, on May 17th, 2011

I’ve never been in the position of having to read through a slush pile to pick out publication worthy short stories. However, as one of the judges of a short fiction contest, I feel like I’ve been through a similar experience. The contest had on the order of 150 submissions. In the first round, we [...]

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