Writing Craft & Showbiz Career Info
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Mothman is My Boyfriend author McKayla Coyle wants to settle it once and for all: Who’s the best monster in (contemporary) literature? | Lit Hub Reading Lists What scientific mediocrity taught Vincent Yu about writing novels. | Lit Hub Craft...
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Published 23 hours ago
One memoir coach sees writers rush ahead into chapters and character detail before understanding: Why am I writing this exact story right now?...
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Published 1 day ago
If you’re a serious reader, you probably have a few intimidating books on your book bucket list. Maybe it’s Ulysses or Moby Dick or Middlemarch or that door stopper of an epic, War and Peace. We might tell ourselves we’ll...
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Published 1 day ago
Of course I knew that Charles Dickens had what was arguably the most brutal and public marital separation in literary history. I can’t remember a time when I didn’t know that in 1858 he left his wife Catherine, to whom...
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Published 1 day ago
I’m kind of obsessed with monsters. Not monster as in “terrible person” but monster as in “the thing living under your bed.” I can’t help it, there’s something so honest about them. A monster is a creature that’s absolutely incapable...
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Published 1 day ago
After creating literary immortals like Lucy Barton, Olive Kitteridge, and Bob Burgess, Pulitzer Prize-winning author Elizabeth Strout is back with her eleventh book, which contains a multitude of new characters, centered around Artie Dam, 57, a self-deprecating high school teacher...
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Published 1 day ago
For a long time I was a good student, until I was very suddenly not. It took considerable evidence, after so many years of being categorized as precocious, to convince me that my days of being ahead of the curve...
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Published 1 day ago
In the spring of 2007, scientists who were using a robotic submarine to explore the deep sea off the California coast spotted a lone purple octopus. They recognized this octopus from her distinctive scars, having seen her just the previous...
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Published 1 day ago
Originally published in Griffith Review edition 89, August 2025 * I have never read anything written by Pearl S. Buck. But a few years ago, I came across something she once said that I have been unable to forget. In...
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Published 1 day ago
Our two new books... STORY QUESTIONS: How To Unlock Your Story One Question At A Time - https://payhip.com/b/ZTvq9 and 17 Steps To Writing A Great Main Character - https://payhip.com/b/kCZGd LEARN COMEDY FROM DAVID ZUCKER - MASTERCRASH: A Crash Course In Spoof Comedy https://mastercrash.com BUY THE BOOK - Surely You Can't Be Serious: The True Story of Airplane! https://amzn.to/3FULs2N Born on...
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Published 1 day ago
“It is absurd that people who look and pray like me and my cousins and uncles, with hearts that could fit in my chest, will die today from bombs forged and dropped by my tax dollars.” Kaveh Akbar considers genocide...
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Published 1 day ago
The following speech was given at the Dayton Literary Peace Prize ceremony on November 10, 2025. * I want to thank my editor, Jordan Pavlin, il miglior fabro, for believing in me and this book from the second it landed...
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Published 2 days ago
Once upon a time, before Ballerina Farm and Nara Smith, there were 1800s domestic advice manuals. In the middle of the 19th century, writers Lydia Maria Child and Catherine Beecher were busy defining what the ideal home—and the ideal woman—should...
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Published 2 days ago
Our two new books... STORY QUESTIONS is currently 10% off! - https://payhip.com/b/ZTvq9 and 17 Steps To Writing A Great Main Character - https://payhip.com/b/kCZGd Joe Burke is an indie filmmaker and actor best known for his new award-winning movie Burt, Four Dogs, Another Cancer Movie, House Sitting and more. As an actor, he has appeared in numerous national commercials and television...
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Published 4 days ago
600 Seconds To Victory? NEWSFLASH: 600 seconds can mean the difference between a full read of your spec screenplay … or not. Why 600 seconds? Well, the received wisdom is that a page of script is equal to one minute of screen time*. If a minute is 60 seconds, then your first ten pages =… Read More »How 600 Seconds Can...
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Published 4 days ago
Imagine If LOST Took Place at a NormsBy Jonas Schwartz-Owen Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die could have been a piercing satire. Instead, the current apocalyptic comedy settles for scattered brilliance. The film is packed with provocative ideas and anchored by a game cast, but director Gore Verbinski’s tone veers wildly off, and the climax falls flat like a plate of frozen...
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Published 4 days ago
The Heartwarming Tale of a Boy and His RockBy Jonas Schwartz-OwenProject Hail Mary should not work. Since Steven Spielberg introduced the world to a squishy, childlike alien in 1982, we’ve endured decades of imitators trying to cash in on the man-and-alien friendship. So, on paper, Ryan Gosling cozying up to a rock-shaped extraterrestrial sounds brain-numbing. Then again, a comedy about sentient...
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Published 5 days ago
I gathered every conference session at the Marché du Film over the past three years (742 events, 1,664 speakers) to see who turns up, who walked away, and what the industry wants to talk about in 2026...
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Published 5 days ago
Our two new books... STORY QUESTIONS is currently 10% off! - https://payhip.com/b/ZTvq9 and 17 Steps To Writing A Great Main Character - https://payhip.com/b/kCZGd Corey Mandell is an award-winning playwright and screenwriter who has written projects for Ridley Scott, Wolfgang Petersen, Harrison Ford, John Travolta, Warner Brothers, Universal, 20th Century Fox, Fox 2000, Fox Family, Working Title, Paramount, Live Planet, Beacon...
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Published 6 days ago
The Minneapolis-based nonprofit publishes fiction, poetry, and creative nonfiction from underrepresented writers....
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Published 6 days ago
The service is shifting to a pooling model where audiobook royalties are affected by how much an Audible member consumes in a month....
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Published 6 days ago
Booksellers.ca is the first online bookselling platform to serve both the English- and French-language readers across Canada....
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Published 6 days ago
The novelist studied bestsellers to learn what could help her reach a wider audience, and identified two crucial elements to incorporate....
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Published 6 days ago
How-to advice is great for fixing a coffee machine, but far less useful when it comes to writing a book. Sure, the advice to have an outline, use it, and write 750 words a day sounds logical. However, writing a book is not a logical, repeatable process. I’ve written eighteen books, and no two followed… The post There’s No Right...
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Published 6 days ago
A repeated word, phrase, motif, symbol, or image can create tension for your readers in small, barely noticeable increments....
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Published 8 days ago
Our two new books... STORY QUESTIONS is currently 10% off! - https://payhip.com/b/ZTvq9 and 17 Steps To Writing A Great Main Character - https://payhip.com/b/kCZGd Brandon Violette was most recently the Head Writer for RoboGobo and Pupstruction at Disney Television Animation and the Co-Creator/Head Writer of CoComelon Lane (Moonbug/Netflix), one of Netflix's top-performing preschool series. His writing credits span hit shows including...
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Published 8 days ago
There's an old saying in Hollywood warning actors not to work with animals or children.If you happen to find yourself in a vintage 1970s-era horror film, however, you should amend that proverb a bit. May I suggest: don't piss off animals or children?Because they will have vengeance, and there will be blood....Case in point, the rather remarkable, half-century old Who Can Kill A...
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Published 9 days ago
Our two new books... STORY QUESTIONS is currently 10% off! - https://payhip.com/b/ZTvq9 and 17 Steps To Writing A Great Main Character - https://payhip.com/b/kCZGd Blake Ridder is a filmmaker, writer, director and actor, born in Shanghai and raised in the United Kingdom from the age of nine. He began acting in 2017, then wrote and directed his first short a year...
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Published 11 days ago
I crunched the data on the films of 190 directors (who had made at least four movies) and calculated 'When you line up a director’s films, how much do they actually look alike?'...
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Published 11 days ago
All About Boy Meets Girl ‘Boy Meets Girl’ is a plotting archetype that underpins probably 90% of romance stories. Across all subgenres and cross-genres of romance, we can see it in action because that’s what our readers and viewers WANT. I thought I would trace this powerful archetype and what makes it hit so hard.… Read More »Boy Meets Girl: How...
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Published 11 days ago
You’ve probably read a lot of writing advice saying that you should avoid using very long sentences because it increases the level of difficulty for readers, especially in a world where attention spans are much shorter, and small screen reading is increasing, but does the reduced frequency of simply using a period (or full stop)… The post Very Long Sentences...
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Published 12 days ago
To my delight and gratitude, Library Journal has reviewed my new book (and final contribution to this series), Horror Films of the 2010s. Here is an excerpt of their review:"Horror reflects the anxieties of an age, and Muir connects the films from 2010-2019 to economic unease, political polarization, and institutional mistrust in the post-Great Recession era... Muir goes out on a...
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Published 12 days ago
Our two new books... STORY QUESTIONS: How To Unlock Your Story One Question At A Time - https://payhip.com/b/ZTvq9 and 17 Steps To Writing A Great Main Character - https://payhip.com/b/kCZGd Adam Argot has worked in film, TV, games, and publishing as a director, writer, author, story and concept artist for over 15 years for both major and independent studios. Along with...
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Published 13 days ago
Author Jim Hanas has launched a website called Small Press Insights that reveals which small-press books are selling on Amazon....
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Published 13 days ago
Faire is a tech wholesale B2B marketplace built for the gift, jewelry, and home goods market, but increasingly used by publishers and bookstores....
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Published 13 days ago
Katie Ferriello has joined as literary agent, focusing on romance, fantasy, and children’s literature....
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Published 13 days ago
Skyhorse Publishing has launched new cookbook imprint Golden Grove Publishing with Culinary Book Creations CEO James O. Fraioli....
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Published 13 days ago
Most characters have a challenge to overcome, but what about more serious physical or psychological issues that can’t be “cured” or ignored?...
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Published 15 days ago
Our two new books... STORY QUESTIONS: How To Unlock Your Story One Question At A Time - https://payhip.com/b/ZTvq9 and 17 Steps To Writing A Great Main Character - https://payhip.com/b/kCZGd Glenn Gers was a professional writer of movies and television for 25 years. His credits include theatrical features including FRACTURE (2007) and MAD MONEY (2008), no-budget indies like DISFIGURED (2008), TV...
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Published 15 days ago
Over a third of action lead roles in the 2020s are going to actors aged 50 and over. It is the highest share on record. But it may also be the moment the cohort is tipping back....
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Published 15 days ago
Our two new books... STORY QUESTIONS is currently 10% off! - https://payhip.com/b/ZTvq9 and 17 Steps To Writing A Great Main Character - https://payhip.com/b/kCZGd Pedro Correa most recently co-wrote (with Fabio Frey), produced and stars-in the coming-of-age drama My Dead Dad (2021) executive produced by Declan Baldwin of Big Indie Pictures (Manchester by the Sea). In-front of the camera, he has...
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Published 18 days ago
Why You Should Build Fear into Your Turning Points When it comes to storytelling, fear is more than a feeling; it’s an underlying force that runs through multiple story elements. Influencing plot, character arc and development, conflict, and theme, fear draws readers in and makes the story feel human and authentic. This emotion is at… Read More »5 Reasons Why You...
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Published 18 days ago
Our new book... STORY QUESTIONS: How To Unlock Your Story One Question At A Time https://payhip.com/b/ZTvq9 We'd like to thank Christopher Pettoni at NYFA for all his work behind the scenes (including camera work) that made this video possible. We'd also like to thank NYFA and Eric Conner for presenting us with this opportunity and opening up their classroom for...
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Published 20 days ago
