It’s a lot of fun pulling the rug out from under your audience. Come on, most of us love that kind of thing; it’s one of the reasons why certain movies, TV shows and stories are so popular. Hell, M. Night Shyamalan has done his damnedest to build his directing career on it, with wildly [...]

A co-worker of my mother’s stumbled across my blog via Twitter, and told her he loved it. He also warned her that I’d need to develop a thick skin if I wanted to survive due to my brutal honesty. Brutal? I’d never thought of myself as ‘brutal’ before. I just don’t think there’s much point [...]

Writing ain’t easy. At its best, it’s a joyous, giddy process, but at its worst, it can be a grinding, maddening slog through the thickets of your imagination, like wandering the Library of Babel without being able to read the signs. You may find yourself with a passel of story and no decent characters to [...]

“Hey,” you think after a showing of Adventureland, “I could write a better movie than that.”
Congratulations! You’ve just joined the ranks of millions, including the entire city of Los Angeles, on a frustrating, frequently soul-crushing adventure. It’ll make you laugh, it’ll make you cry, and if you’re lucky, you might just come out of the [...]

Hard choices. Shades of gray. No clear right or wrong. Man, that’s the stuff of good drama, the conflict that propels the best stories. That’s what elevates fiction into art, or at least one of the things. If narratives were only black and white, there would be no anti-heroes, no tragic villains.
Moral choices make up [...]

Howdy, Scribophiles! We’re pretty excited to announce a whole swath of updates today. Here goes:
Introducing Megan Christopher
Jane Rutherford will be transitioning from her post as Scribophile blogger extraordinaire. We’re sad to see her go, and wish her the best as she continues on in her writing career.
Stepping up to carry [...]