Tag Archives: Writing

Arts & Humanities, Books & Reading, Current Affairs, Film & Movies, Pleasures, Podcasts

Stephen King Revealed His Approach To Writing A Mystery Novel, And It’s Way More Alfred Hitchcock Than It Is Agatha Christie

He’s not interested in the “whodunit?” of it all.

By Ryan LaBee, September 10, 2023

Video: https://cdn.jwplayer.com/previews/lq5UdPhW

From media collection…

Few names are as iconic as Stephen King when it comes to the written word. Known for his spine-tingling tales of horror and suspense, which have been adapted into countless horror movies, King has enthralled readers for decades with his unique brand of storytelling.

But in a recent interview, the master of the macabre revealed a surprising twist in his approach to writing mystery novels, and it takes a deliberate page (pun intended) straight out of Alfred Hitchcock’s playbook of suspense as opposed to Agatha Christie’s guide.

The renowned author of Salem’s Lot is currently promoting his latest novel, Holly, which reintroduces his beloved character from Mr. Mercedes. It’s a gripping story about a mass murderer plowing a Mercedes-Benz through a crowd at a job fair. During an interview on The Book Review Podcast, the horror author shared his approach to crafting mysteries, emphasizing his preference for the suspenseful style of Alfred Hitchcock over the intricate whodunits often associated with Agatha Christie.

Source: https://www.cinemablend.com/movies/stephen-king-revealed-approach-to-writing-mystery-novel-way-more-alfred-hitchcock-than-agatha-christie

Arts & Humanities, Books & Reading, Current Affairs, Film & Movies, Personal & Writings

4 classic books that teach deep insights through unlikable protagonists

You can learn a lot about life through literature’s most unrespectable and heinous characters.

By Tom Brinkof, May 15, 2023

Unlikable protagonists come in many shapes and sizes. (Credit: laporteouvertedotme / Wikipedia)

In his book, “Save the Cat!”, Blake Snyder offers storytelling tips for aspiring screenwriters. His main piece of advice, from which the book gets its title, is to “save the cat.”

In short, Snyder argues that writers should introduce their protagonists by having them do something that demonstrates their key traits or moral code, which sometimes means the character does something to make the audience like them—like saving a kitten from a tree.

Likable characters, after all, can produce more compelling stories than unlikable ones. Snyder has a point. Likable protagonists engage the audience by making it easier to relate to their personalities and struggles. The more we root for a character, the happier we feel when they accomplish their goal, and the sadder we get when they don’t. Unlikable protagonists, by contrast, risk alienating their audience. At worst, we don’t care if they fail or succeed. At best, we actively want them to fail.

Source: Valuable lessons from literature’s most unlikable protagonists

Arts & Humanities, Books & Reading, Current Affairs, Film & Movies, Politics, Television

Writers Strike: Why AI Should Be Central in the Fight | Vanity Fair

By Nick Bilton, May 9, 2023

From Getty Images. 

When you’re writing a story about an issue that affects a large group of people, whether it’s for a news outlet or a television show, you often pick one person as the anecdotal lead of the tale. That character serves a purpose: to make a specific thesis feel less nebulous and more, dare I say, human.

Right now in Hollywood, there are some 11,500 humans who could be the lead of this particular story. Writers who have spent their careers holed up in writers rooms or coffee shops, figuring out plots and characters and dialogue and stuffing them into 30- or 60-page scripts. But this past week, those same screenwriters have woken up, donned blue T-shirts that say “Writers Guild of America,” grabbed a red-and-black picket sign, and descended on the sidewalks of one of the big Hollywood studios. Then, as gangly palm trees sway nearby and rivers of cars flow along Los Angeles’s concrete canals, these writers have trudged back and forth on the pavements in front of Paramount Studios and CBS and Disney and Netflix—on strike as screenwriters for television shows and movies for the first time in 15 years.

Source: Writers Strike: Why AI Should Be Central in the Fight | Vanity Fair

Current Affairs

Life Advice for Book Lovers: Finding Joy in Retirement ‹ Literary Hub

Book Recommendations for the Troubled Soul

By Dorothea, January 19, 2023

From article…

Dear Dorothea,

I’m sixty. I just took my pension after having worked in the Quebec health system for forty-two years. Yes, I survived COVID. I saw a lot of my old patients die, and I had to work under less than ideal conditions. We were forced to wear masks, scrubs and gloves all day.

Moreover, there was a lack of personnel because many employees got the bug. Therefore, the rest of us had to work like dogs but did not sleep like logs, afraid as we were of falling sick too. It was a time of distress.

So, I should feel joyous not going to work anymore, but not as much as I think I would. I’m telling myself that I will finally be able to finish and polish the sci-fi series of adventure novels I began years ago. However, in the morning I feel a little bit depressed. I have trouble believing that the whole time of each new day (or at last a big part of it) can be spent pursuing my heart’s desires.

It’s like Society is whispering in my utilitarian programmed brain: do something useful, start a garden, cook with your wife, find a part-time job, study theology, etc. How can you believe that what you write will interest anybody?

Should I read positive thinking books, although most of them are written by Republican car salesmen?

Thank you, Morning Hope, Morning Sadness

Source: Life Advice for Book Lovers: Finding Joy in Retirement ‹ Literary Hub

Arts & Humanities, Books & Reading, Current Affairs, Science & Health, Travel

Returning, Again, to Robert M. Pirsig | The New Yorker

All roads lead to “Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance.”

By Jay Caspian Kang, October 25, 2022

As readers, we believed Robert M. Pirsig could see the Buddha in a well-maintained carburetor. We wanted to see it, too, and we wanted to work as he did.Photograph from Alamy 

Every writer I know has memories they return to in their work over and over again. There is rarely much logic to the choices, nor do such memories tend to align with the sorts of significant events that traditionally make up the time line of one’s life.

My point of fixation, one that’s appeared a few times in my writing, occurred during a solo cross-country road trip I took at the age of nineteen. I was driving to Seattle, where I knew nobody, and was planning to stop for the night in Billings, Montana. It was already late, and I had been keeping myself awake with a non-stop chain of cigarettes and vending-machine coffee I’d dutifully bought at every rest stop along the way. I had a pile of books on tape on the passenger’s seat.

About an hour outside of Billings, I put in “Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance,” which, coincidentally, starts out on a road trip to Montana. The first line—“I can see by my watch, without taking my hand from the left grip of the cycle, that it is eight-thirty in the morning”—had a hypnotic effect on me. I blew through Billings that night, and for the next six hours I listened to Robert M. Pirsig’s barely fictional meditation on fatherhood, Chautauquas, Zen, tools, and the idea that quality—the main conceptual preoccupation of Pirsig’s life—lay in the repetition of right actions.

Editor’s Note: Read more, see link below for original item…

Source: https://www.newyorker.com/news/our-columnists/returning-again-to-robert-m-pirsig

Arts & Humanities, Books & Reading, Memories & History

On Maggie Bradbury, the woman who “changed literature forever.” ‹ Literary Hub

By Emily Temple, August 30, 2022, 9:40am

from article…

Ray Bradbury met his first girlfriend—and his future wife—in a bookstore. But they didn’t lock eyes over the same just-selected novel, or bump into each other in a narrow aisle, sending books and feelings flying.

It was a warm afternoon in April 1946, and 25-year-old Ray Bradbury—an up-and-coming pulp fiction writer—was wearing a trench coat and carrying a briefcase while he scanned the shelves at Fowler Brothers Bookstore in downtown Los Angeles.

Naturally, Marguerite McClure—Maggie—who worked at the bookstore, “was immediately suspicious.” Someone had been stealing books, but hadn’t yet been caught. So she struck up a conversation. “I expected him to slam his briefcase down on a pile of books and make off with a few,” she said. “Instead, he told me he was a writer and invited me to have a cup of coffee with him.”

Coffee became lunch became dinner became romance; Maggie was the first woman Ray had ever dated, but he managed all right, and they were married on September 27, 1947.

Source: https://lithub.com/on-maggie-bradbury-the-woman-who-changed-literature-forever/