Let me start by saying that I am not all head-over-heels for Inception the way everyone else seems to be. I thought it was an intriguing idea, but not as mind-bendingly original as it has been hyped. Plus, I felt the director (and his screenplay doctors) got a little sloppy with it at the end.
Also, I don’t find a lot of writing advice that doesn’t make me grimace at how narrow and peevish it is: “Avoid all adverbs!” — “Only use the word ‘said’ as a dialogue tag!” — “Always start in media res!”
But, Lydia Sharp at The Sharp Angle has managed to overcome my ambivalence toward Inception and my advice-o-phobia with her blog post in which she uses the film remarkably well to illustrate how to mix high concept with emotional resonance to create a compelling story. I recommend it to all writers!
A three-legged table is vastly more stable
yest. (1) The foam, spume, or flower of beer in fermentation; barm.
The War of 1812 is one of America’s least known wars and yet the conflict in which we truly established our place as an independent actor on the world stage. (There really should be more historical fiction written about this war!)
I first became aware of the slippage of the idea of a mash-up when I found songs on the iTunes store identified as “mash-ups” which were in fact merely remakes or sample-derived songs.
If today’s Telegraph
The literary world is abuzz with news that author Anne Rice has abandoned Christianity. In the name of Christ. Or something like that.
When I first read the headline of the latest salivation for Tom McCarthy’s eagerly awaited novel,
demonocracy. Government by demons. Greek daimon, a ministering spirit; kratos, rule … There is also the form demonarchy (Greek arche, rule), which seems a better word to employ than demonocracy, lest one elide a syllable.