From the monthly archives:

December 2009

By Jove, Holmes, you’re an action hero!

December 30, 2009

I understand why Hollywood turns to established stories and mangles them, but it still makes me sad. It’s a fact of life, like old age and reality television, but that doesn’t make it any more pleasant. The first motivation comes from the Safety of the Known. A story like Sherlock Holmes has stood up to [...]

Read the full article →

Viva la Resolution

December 28, 2009

I’ve never liked New Year’s resolutions.  I’m not against the idea of resolutions themselves but most people that make New Year’s resolutions are just blowing smoke.  They’re counting on some mystical power of January 1 that just isn’t there folks.  They call it resolution but it’s usually self-pitying wishful thinking.  It lacks intent. That said, [...]

Read the full article →

Dialogue Tags

December 23, 2009

Dialogue tags. Or Snags.  I took the long route when it comes to tagging dialogue.  Under the mistaken belief that the snappier, more interesting and unusual my tags, the better dialogue, ergo the better story I’d create.  After attending a couple of workshops, to my horror, I learned that the list of fifty plus creative [...]

Read the full article →

Re-imagining Classics of Literature

December 21, 2009

Cable/satellite television channel SyFy recently ran the four-hour mini-series Alice, which is a re-imagining of the classic Lewis Carroll book Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and its sequel Through the Looking-Glass.  The same production company also released the six-hour mini-series Tin Man in late 2007, which as you may have guessed is a re-imagining of L. [...]

Read the full article →

Bah, Humbug!

December 16, 2009

I don’t like Christmas. Okay, that’s not entirely true. To be precise, I don’t like what Christmas has become: the slick, sappy, overly-commercialized capitalistic extravaganza that now constitutes the holiday season—a season that begins shortly after Labor Day and runs through the end of January. I didn’t always feel this way. Looking back, I have [...]

Read the full article →

← Previous Entries