Only erotica and George Lucas have celebration scenes
I was at an erotica writing workshop recently, and one of the women running the panel on characterization said that one of the scenes she likes to write is the “celebration” scene. That’s what she called it. The whole “We’ve been through a terrible time and survived. Let’s celebrate… by fucking!” I asked her about [...]
Showing Too Much.
Show, don’t tell. It’s not just a great song by Rush, it’s a battlecry of writers everywhere to the raw recruits. Over and over, we writers are told, it is import to show the story through the eyes of the characters, through the words they say and do, through the events they hear, see, and [...]
When will it be okay to write gay villains again?
I was re-reading Diane Wynne Jones The Tough Guide to Fantasyland shortly after reading a forgettable spy novel from the mid 1960′s in which the villain was quite fey and enjoyed threatening the hero with sodomy before death and all that. Jones asserts that many fantasy parties have a gay wizard (paging Lynn Flewelling), who [...]
Good news, and apologies…
I just paid my server bill. Look like y’all will have me for another year. Thanks to everyone who contributed last year and helped keep The Journal Entries and my other works on the air. Also, I want to apologize to people who may have commented recently. I seem not to be getting emails from [...]
Nicholson Baker, House Of Holes
Nicholson Baker writes three kinds of books: non-fiction, literary fiction, and porn. It’s odd that although he’s known for the phone-sex masterpiece Vox, the only thing I’d ever read by him was The Anthologist, a wonky first-person slow-moving story about a poetry writer and editor with a near-fatal case of writer’s block. It’s well-written and has a solid [...]
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