Mark Twain, who knew whereof he spoke, wrote that the difference between the right word and the almost-right word is the difference between the lightning and the lightning-bug. This is true, and it’s even more so with dialogue. You can get across what a character would say, and tell your story. Or you can, every […]
Originally published on Facebook 27 March 2017. I value great horror fiction as much as I value great science fiction, and in some ways even more, in large part because it functions as science fiction’s reciprocal complement. The subject, at core, is humanity. Horror diagnoses the problem. At its best, science fiction provides the prescription. […]
Because writing is a spectacularly uncinematic occupation, almost all films about writers rely on tricks more congenial to celluloid: to wit, the writer has an adventure, the writer magically produces a book and is instantly famous with complications, the real-life famous writer experiences a spectacular event that prefigures his classic perfectly and establishes that he […]