Life has a way of teaching you the same lesson over and over. It doesn’t care if you think it’s redundant. It will not apologize for repeating itself. Life goes on and on and on. It never shuts up. When life keeps giving you the same education in suffering it’s up to you to find new meanings in it.
Aristotle once said, “We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then is not an act but a habit.”
The same can be said for how we cope. When I first learned to deal with depression I did it destructively. Continue reading Repeat Yourself: How to Write When You Have Nothing New to Say →
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I was a script reader in a past life. My job was to read all the screenplays an independent production house received, summarize them, estimate their budgets, and gave them grade. My “pass” or “consider” rating system determined if the producers gave more than a passing glance at the material that was sent to them.
When I got to work their were two piles: priority screenplays, solicited scripts with talent and directors already attached, and then there was the other pile, the pile I had to dig into when I ran out of the stuff my bosses wanted me to read. These were the mystery scripts with hieroglyphic fonts, foreign formatting, and dialogue blurbs that stretched on over several pages. These were the unvetted works from screenwriters who’d yet to find agency representation. This pile was a dangerous game of reading roulette. Continue reading How Writers Can Remix the Past →
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There’s a new trend happening in the part of the web that reports on popular films. Those crazy fan theories that once resided in the darkest shadows of the Internet are being put in the spotlight, and the once most aggravating geeks are now churning out click-bait.
Some of these theories are interesting examinations of the foreshadowing techniques, visual language, and symbolism of franchise films. Others find meaning in the supporting materials. Star Wars fan theorists riffle through novelizations for descriptions that differ from what they saw on screen. They scan the notation of a films’ score for meaningful melodies. They interpret concept art for scenes that were never filmed. They deduce plot points from toy line advertisements. Continue reading How Writers can Use Their Crazy Fan Theories →
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The Phantom of Truth appeared at the foot of my bed. His black robe draped over the mattress. His boney knees made the springs squeal. He pinned me to the pillows with a crocked finger as thick as a broom handle.
The Phantom did not fade in and out like a waking dream. He was a real tangible thing, buckling the floorboards, scrapping his hunchback against the ceiling, getting dust all over everything. He was a giant whose every movement shook the room. If he jumped he’d take the whole floor down with him.
It occurred to me that his long black robe was made from scales. I thought the robe might’ve been stitched together from snakeskins, until I saw it puff out on its own like the sack beneath a frog’s neck. The cloak had no seams. I couldn’t tell where it ended and the creature’s long arms began. Continue reading The Phantom of Truth →
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Advice for writers, stories about the world they live in.
