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Is a Good Mystery Hard to Find? Part II: The Lehane Addiction

August 6, 2010

Cover of Shutter Island: A Novel One of our blog readers made an excellent point in response to Part I of this series of blog posts (Thank you Katie!). She stated that most mysteries are more plot-driven than character-driven. This explains why in some mystery novels, the characters seem a little flat. Luckily, I believe [...]

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The New Archetypes Part 1

July 19, 2010

Image via Wikipedia Archetypes in the movies is certainly nothing new.  It’s almost impossible to discuss Star Wars (OT obviously) without talking about heroic archetypes and heroes’ journeys.  Many of those archetypes are so ancient that they are as old as storytelling itself.  Movies aren’t ancient but they seem to have had quite an effect on storytelling in [...]

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Palimpsest by Gore Vidal

June 25, 2010

Cover of Palimpsest: A Memoir Palimpsest is Gore Vidal’s first memoir. Early on in the book, he makes the point that this is not an autobiography, but a memoir. Too many autobiographies read like an excuse for the author’s failings and a platform for their supposed triumphs, as though they are getting their two cents [...]

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Books That Influence: A Coney Island of the Mind

June 23, 2010

Lawrence Ferlinghetti via last.fm Starting out as a young writer I never wrote stories. Poetry was more my speed. And as a young poet I wrote my share of really, really bad poetry complete with awkward rhymes and sappy subject matter. But somewhere in my junior year of high school I was introduced to a [...]

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Drawing Them In: Advice on Creating Opening Lines

June 7, 2010

Image via WikipediaWhenever I walk into a Barnes and Noble two things happen: 1. I breathe a little easier because being surrounded by books is like therapy for me. 2. After that euphoric experience my senses become immediately overloaded with all the possibilities. Which book should I choose? Do I go with an old reliable [...]

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