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Nathan Bransford is the author of JACOB WONDERBAR AND THE COSMIC SPACE KAPOW, a middle grade novel about three kids who blast off into space, break the universe, and have to find their way back home, which will be published by Dial Books for Young Readers in May 2011. He was formerly a literary agent with Curtis Brown Ltd., but is now a publishing civilian working in the tech industry. He lives in San Francisco.
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I've written lots and lots of writing advice tweets over the years. Here they are, all in one place!
I will keep adding to this list as I tweet them out and as Twitter allows more access to older tweets:
By: Nathan Bransford,
on 2/11/2013
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Thanks so much to everyone who entered the 5th Sort-of-annual Stupendously Ultimate First Paragraph Challenge coinciding with the release of
Jacob Wonderbar and the Interstellar Time Warp! Please do check out the trilogy. It's fun for you! Fun for you too! Fun for you, person in the fancy sweater in the back! Yeah. Especially you.
Jacob Wonderbar and the Cosmic Space KapowJacob Wonderbar for President of the UniverseJacob Wonderbar and the Interstellar Time WarpNow then. The winner of the 5th Sort-of-annual Stupendously Ultimate First Paragraph Challenge is...
At the bottom of the post.
First up, as always, the reason I chose these finalists. As I'm sure you can tell by the
length of the list of honorable mentions, I was extremely impressed by the entries, and not just the ones who were named. There were lots and lots of stellar entries and they were a pleasure to read.
My feelings about first paragraphs can basically be summed up by this tweet:
A first paragraph is a surprisingly important part of an entire novel, because it has to do so much. It eases the reader into the novel. But the reader literally has no idea where they are. The paragraph has to carefully guide the reader through the paragraph and into the world of the novel. Flow is important, crucial details are important, and voice is important.
As usually the finalists represented a wide range of styles and approaches, but I feel like they all accomplished this task extremely well. Here's a bit more about each of them.
Sue Curnow:
The Mazda hit ice. Carter cursed, fought for control, lost it in kaleidoscope swirls, and the vehicle hurtled down a steep bank, jamming Tori against seat and headrest. Terror strangled her heart, breath refused to come and let out her screams. Stillness as the car stopped, engine running, headlights shining on pristine snow. Relief caught laughter in Tori’s throat, until she realized where they’d ended up. The Coldwater River. Confirming her fears, ice cracked loud as a pistol shot. Carter undid his seatbelt. Tori depressed the button on hers. It refused to give despite her frantic efforts. Carter opened his door, got out the car, then bent to peer back in. “Goodbye, Tori,” he said.
As longtime readers know from my
page critiques, I'm not always a fan of high concept openings and
in media res action. But this paragraph really works. In addition to clever turns of phrase like "kaleidoscope swirls," this paragraph stands out to me because it has just the right amount of detail and it builds through tension through the short sentences The crash is told through a collection of images, but it doesn't feel disjointed and I never felt lost. And of course, the parting shot opens up thousands of questions.
Robert Wyatt:
One of the hoariest adages in booklore is that a tale should never commence with a description of the weather, but what is to be done if you wish to tell about a wraith found at your doorstep in the midst of an electrical snowstorm? Skip to the good, warm part in the middle? No. You must tell it as it was.
I'm also not normally a fan of self-aware openings (on top of being high concept!), but this one just works. What comes through in this paragraph is the character of the narrator. I loved the turn of phrase of "good, warm part in the middle" and the punchline of "You must tell it as it was," which made me laugh. Well done.
Crystal:
Peter had seen strangers in the road before, but there was something different about this man...something sinister. Most people passed on their way without a thought for what might lie on the opposite bank of the river that ran beside the road, but this man, in his tattered cloak that fluttered restlessly around him, stood bent and still. He seemed to be staring at a spot on the edge of the road, as if he knew that was where a bridge should begin.
I really admired this paragraph for its steady build-up and the tension that the author creates with the solitary man, capped off with perhaps my favorite turn of phrase in the entire competition: "as if he knew that was where a bridge should begin." Such a fantastic evocation of mystery and possibility.
Saille:
It was a good day until fire started falling out of the sky. The sun was just up, and the leading edge of the spring burn was behaving exactly as the kindlers had predicted, which was a relief, because this was Thus’s first year as an outrunner. Ahead, he could hear the high whistles of his herd of capas, and see their broad silver backs parting the grasses, leaving gleaming, vee-shaped wakes behind them. They moved toward the firebreak restively, but without panic. He supposed they must have grazed their way back across it in the night. It didn’t matter. This was the one day that Thus and the other stewards didn’t need to be responsible for their small allotments of the People’s larger herd. A capa could keep out of the way of fire more easily than the People, because capas weren’t responsible for putting it out. He still felt a wash of protectiveness, though. He’d delivered some of the young for the first time this year, turning their tapering heads and soft, wrinkled paws to lie correctly along the birth canal before drawing them, dark and shining, into the world, where the rhythm of their mothers’ hearts gave way to the susurration of the grasses.
It's very difficult to ease readers into a foreign world, but this one works very well. I don't know what a capa is, I don't know what an outrunner is, and I don't know what a kindler is, but I never felt lost because I knew enough to picture what was happening and felt grounded with the descriptions and the authority the author builds.
Todd Zuniga:
Delia walks over to the couch where I’m sitting, asks me, “Seriously, why’d you manslaughter your baby?” I tell her she already knows I don’t know. “Huh,” she considers as she crosses her arms. Her hair a tangle of grey curls. Maybe, maybe-not Delia has room to judge: she manslaughtered her mother, who was eighty-three.
I really liked how this paragraph kept me off balance while not feeling overly forced. This paragraph could be from many different types of novels, but I like the ordinary-feeling approach even as I came away feeling very curious about the rules of this world.
Cheryl W.:
Time is a funny thing. People often discover this quite young. You can be in time, on time, buy time, waste time, but you can never trust time. Even though some folks will claim time’s on their side, or their ally is time, or they have time, time doesn’t know them from any other of the trillion souls that live and breathe upon the earth. Time is oblivious to us and likes it that way, thank you very much. “Time,” as most people know it, is purely a manmade manifestation of numbers on a watch or shadows on a sundial, even radioactive isotopes oscillating rain or shine, but Time itself is as elusive as the future to a dying man. We desperately seek to control it, manipulate it and force trains to run to it, but as we never understand from whence the universe came or where it’s going, we’re lost in contemplation of Time’s vagaries. For instance: the past can be as alive to a person as the present, seeming to exist as one within the eye of the observer, just as Einstein posited. To those who insist upon it, time - the present and the past - can be experienced simultaneously. Bartholomew Lewis was just such a man.
Lots of people tried the very difficult "let me muse about the world for a sec" approach to the first paragraph, whose degree of difficulty is approximately 11.5 on a scale of 1 to 10. Cheryl W. accomplished this with some very skillful writing and some genuinely interesting observations. It doesn't feel like it's trying too hard, and yet I came away intrigued.
Chris Bailey:
I would have given Mom a good-bye hug, but StepThad’s arm rested across her shoulder. Like the two of them were glued together. Double hug or nothing.
It's amazing how much Chris Bailey is able to accomplish here with just three short sentences. Such a believable voice, a lot of backstory told through detail alone, and "StepThad!"
Congratulations to all the finalists! Please
contact me to collect your prizes.
And! the! Winner! Is!.....
elizabethmarianaranjo:
She was a striking girl, all shadow and stillness. Judith watched her carefully. Twenty years teaching middle school had taught her the subtler ways to approach them, the ones who wore solitude like a shell. If you look away, they disappear. But if you look too close, they withdraw. You have to learn to look sideways.
This is such a flawless paragraph. It builds mystery, it's got clever turns of phrase (love "wore solitude like a shell"), and it kicks off what is sure to be a very interesting relationship.
Well done!!
Whew! And that's a wrap, folks. Thank you so much to everyone who entered, you are all rather awesome and this was a whole lot of fun.
Until next year! Or, uh, at least until the next time I get the courage to read hundreds of paragraphs.
Goodness me!
It pains me to have been forced to judge an affair as middle class as a first paragraph contest. Are we now to share our inner thoughts with one another in public? Are we all artists, running naked in the streets? How horrid.
Lord Bransford told me that the caliber of entries was the best he'd ever seen in any of his contests, but I found them all perfectly dreadful. If I had to choose a winner it would none of them. I would hate for people to be left with something as pointless as ambition.
However, Lord Bransford informed me that I must choose a selection of finalists, though why he didn't write a will with these instructions and leave them in the care of an unreliable heir I shall never know. All instructions of import should be argued over at great length over the course of many years. What else shall we aristocrats do with our time? Learn to cook?
There were many common threads in these entries, perhaps the most common of which is death in far too many forms. I am all-too-familiar with death having frequented the halls Downton Abbey, where one must check one's pulse at regular intervals lest you realize you've been afflicted with a mysterious disease and perished before they could even put away the silverware. Luckily I shall outlive you all because you cannot kill the witty.
A weakness in many entries was an excess of chattiness, which I simply cannot abide. Save it for the gallows, where you shall doubtless end up with such excitable loose lips.
Another common trope was that if only the narrator had known what was about to happen then everything would have been quite different. Why yes, I do suppose that if one were a fortuneteller quite a bit about life would be rather different. But we don't walk around gazing into crystal balls, do we? Life is interesting enough as it is, one needn't be so surprised by it all.
Sighing, gasping, waking up, and looking into mirrors were all abundantly accounted for in these paragraphs. I began to wonder if I were reading descriptions of a typical morning for my granddaughter Lady Mary.
And dare I say there is much about England that is changing these days but I'm quite certain the definition of a "paragraph" has not changed. There were far too many revolutionaries who chose to ignore the strictures of the English language. I cannot abide revolutions, everyone winds up disappointed in the end.
Now, these are the honorable mentions, who will be allowed henceforce to bring me tea in the library, provided they are properly attired and have not engaged in any previous desultory behavior.
Matt Borgardheatherkamins.comT AydelottLianeJDuncanKelly JohnsonCharlee ValeCrafty Green PoetBryan HilsonCathrine BockharryipantsJoannaChad SourbeerEva NatielloIliad fanIrene PozoukidisPamelaThe instructions for voting is as follows. I argued with Lord Bransford that no women should be involved in something as sinister as voting, but he insisted that it be open to all. These are vulgar times indeed.
In order to vote for the winner, please leave a vote in the comments section of this post. You will have until Sunday, 7pm Eastern time to vote. Kindly do not e-mail Lord Bransford your vote (gracious me, what is "e-mail," is it some sort of ghastly dance?).
There shall be no campaigning in private or public for yourself or your favorites, and suspicious voting may result in disqualification. Participating in this entire exercise should well be grounds for disqualification, but I suppose it's far too late for that.
Anonymous commenting will be closed for the duration of the voting to ensure transparency. The winner shall be announced on Monday.
The eight finalists are...
Sue Curnow:The Mazda hit ice. Carter cursed, fought for control, lost it in kaleidoscope swirls, and the vehicle hurtled down a steep bank, jamming Tori against seat and headrest. Terror strangled her heart, breath refused to come and let out her screams. Stillness as the car stopped, engine running, headlights shining on pristine snow. Relief caught laughter in Tori’s throat, until she realized where they’d ended up. The Coldwater River. Confirming her fears, ice cracked loud as a pistol shot. Carter undid his seatbelt. Tori depressed the button on hers. It refused to give despite her frantic efforts. Carter opened his door, got out the car, then bent to peer back in. “Goodbye, Tori,” he said.
Robert Wyatt:
One of the hoariest adages in booklore is that a tale should never commence with a description of the weather, but what is to be done if you wish to tell about a wraith found at your doorstep in the midst of an electrical snowstorm? Skip to the good, warm part in the middle? No. You must tell it as it was.
Crystal:
Peter had seen strangers in the road before, but there was something different about this man...something sinister. Most people passed on their way without a thought for what might lie on the opposite bank of the river that ran beside the road, but this man, in his tattered cloak that fluttered restlessly around him, stood bent and still. He seemed to be staring at a spot on the edge of the road, as if he knew that was where a bridge should begin.
Saille:
It was a good day until fire started falling out of the sky. The sun was just up, and the leading edge of the spring burn was behaving exactly as the kindlers had predicted, which was a relief, because this was Thus’s first year as an outrunner. Ahead, he could hear the high whistles of his herd of capas, and see their broad silver backs parting the grasses, leaving gleaming, vee-shaped wakes behind them. They moved toward the firebreak restively, but without panic. He supposed they must have grazed their way back across it in the night. It didn’t matter. This was the one day that Thus and the other stewards didn’t need to be responsible for their small allotments of the People’s larger herd. A capa could keep out of the way of fire more easily than the People, because capas weren’t responsible for putting it out. He still felt a wash of protectiveness, though. He’d delivered some of the young for the first time this year, turning their tapering heads and soft, wrinkled paws to lie correctly along the birth canal before drawing them, dark and shining, into the world, where the rhythm of their mothers’ hearts gave way to the susurration of the grasses.
elizabethmarianaranjo.com:
She was a striking girl, all shadow and stillness. Judith watched her carefully. Twenty years teaching middle school had taught her the subtler ways to approach them, the ones who wore solitude like a shell. If you look away, they disappear. But if you look too close, they withdraw. You have to learn to look sideways.
Todd Zuniga:
Delia walks over to the couch where I’m sitting, asks me, “Seriously, why’d you manslaughter your baby?” I tell her she already knows I don’t know. “Huh,” she considers as she crosses her arms. Her hair a tangle of grey curls. Maybe, maybe-not Delia has room to judge: she manslaughtered her mother, who was eighty-three.
Cheryl W.:
Time is a funny thing. People often discover this quite young. You can be in time, on time, buy time, waste time, but you can never trust time. Even though some folks will claim time’s on their side, or their ally is time, or they have time, time doesn’t know them from any other of the trillion souls that live and breathe upon the earth. Time is oblivious to us and likes it that way, thank you very much. “Time,” as most people know it, is purely a manmade manifestation of numbers on a watch or shadows on a sundial, even radioactive isotopes oscillating rain or shine, but Time itself is as elusive as the future to a dying man. We desperately seek to control it, manipulate it and force trains to run to it, but as we never understand from whence the universe came or where it’s going, we’re lost in contemplation of Time’s vagaries. For instance: the past can be as alive to a person as the present, seeming to exist as one within the eye of the observer, just as Einstein posited. To those who insist upon it, time - the present and the past - can be experienced simultaneously. Bartholomew Lewis was just such a man.
Chris Bailey:
I would have given Mom a good-bye hug, but StepThad’s arm rested across her shoulder. Like the two of them were glued together. Double hug or nothing.
Congratulations to everyone. God help the winners of this affair.
By: Nathan Bransford,
on 2/7/2013
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Back because it's tradition, the Stupendously Ultimate First Paragraph word cloud! I took all 100,000 words in all the entries and here are the most common ones.
As always, "like" looms large. Thanks to the good people at
Wordle for the tool:
Finalists will be announced tomorrow! Yes, really! I will have read all 800+ entries! And judged them appropriately!
Any favorites?
It's publication day for Jacob Wonderbar and the Interstellar Time Warp! The trilogy is now officially complete. Wow!
Jacob Wonderbar and the Cosmic Space KapowJacob Wonderbar for President of the UniverseJacob Wonderbar and the Interstellar Time Warp
I started writing Jacob Wonderbar in the fall of 2008 with barely a notion that it would turn into anything, and four and a half years later, after many, many hours of writing and working on this series it's finally complete and out there in the world.
Please check out all three whether you're eight years old or ninety-eight or anything in between or even older. There's something in there for everyone.
And if you don't believe me, here's Kirkus:
Wonderbar #1Wonderbar #2Wonderbar #3Meanwhile, we're having ourselves
quite a first paragraph contest!! There's still time to enter, so come on down with your first paragraph and
enter the contest! The winner will have their manuscript considered by superstar agent Catherine Drayton. If you don't have a paragraph handy: write one!
And in keeping with all of the themes of this post, I thought I'd post the first paragraph from each book in the
Jacob Wonderbar series:
Jacob Wonderbar and the Cosmic Space Kapow
Each type of substitute teacher had its own special weakness, and Jacob Wonderbar knew every possible trick to distract them. Male substitutes with long hair and women in tie-dyed skirts often had a guitar stashed nearby and were just waiting for an excuse to ditch the lesson plan and play a song. The mousy ones who spoke softly and tentatively when they introduced themselves would patiently answer every absurd question Jacob asked them and would be confronting a classroom gone wild within minutes.
Jacob Wonderbar for President of the Universe
Jacob slammed the door to his mom's car and stomped through the supermarket parking lot. "Jacob," his mom called after him. "I can understand if you don't want to talk about it but please don't take it out on my car."
Jacob Wonderbar and the Interstellar Time Warp[Oops I can't share this one because it has spoilers!! Sorry!]
By: Nathan Bransford,
on 2/5/2013
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By: Nathan Bransford,
on 2/4/2013
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It's the grandaddy of them all. The big kahuna. The 32 oz porterhouse with a side of awesome.
It's our FIFTH Sort-of-Annual um don't point out that the last one was two years ago oops too late Stupendously First Paragraph Challenge!!!
Do you have the best paragraph of them all? Will you make Charles Dickens wish he ditched "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times" for your paragraph when he wrote A Tale of Two Cities?
Let's see.
First and most importantly: ALL THE PRIZES.
The ultimate grand prize winner of the SUFPC will win:
1) The opportunity to have a partial manuscript considered by my wildly awesome agent Catherine Drayton of InkWell. Who does Catherine represent, you might ask? Why, only authors such as Markus Zusak (The Book Thief), John Flanagan (The Ranger's Apprentice series), Becca Fitzpatrick (Hush Hush), and many more amazing writers. This is a rather excellent prize. You don't even have to write a query letter!
2) All the finalists will win a query critique from me trust me I've still got my query-revising skillz. Said critique is redeemable at any time.
3) All the finalists in the USA (sorry non-USAers, international postage is bananas) will win a signed copy of my new novel, last in the Jacob Wonderbar trilogy, in stores and available online on Thursday, Jacob Wonderbar and the Interstellar Time Warp!! Please check this bad boy out I swear you'll love it and you won't even get eaten by a dinosaur:
Jacob Wonderbar and the Cosmic Space KapowJacob Wonderbar for President of the UniverseJacob Wonderbar and the Interstellar Time Warp4) All finalists and winners win the pride of knowing that you are in some truly fantastic company. Let's review the now-published authors who were finalists in writing contests on this blog before they became famous and fancy published authors:
Stuart Neville! Victoria Schwab! Terry DeHart! Michelle Hodkin! Michelle Davidson Argyle! Joshua McCune! Natalie Whipple! Josin L. McQuein! Jeanne Ryan! Peter Cooper!
Are we missing anyone? I sometimes forget THERE ARE SO MANY.
There may also be honorable mentions. You may win the lottery during the time you are entering this contest. Who can say really?
So! Here's how this works. Please read these rules very carefully:
a) This is a for-fun contest. Rules may be adjusted without notice, as I see fit, but this one will always be here: Please don't take this contest overly seriously. This is for fun. Yes, the grand prize is awesome and I would have willingly picked a fight with Mike Tyson to have had my manuscript considered by Catherine Drayton without ever having to write a query, but please don't let that detract from the fact that this contest is for-fun.
b) Please post the first paragraph of any work-in-progress in the comments section of THIS POST. If you are reading this post via e-mail you must click through to enter.
Please do not e-mail me your submission it will not count.
c) The deadline for entry is this THURSDAY 7pm Eastern time, at which point entries will be closed. Finalists will be announced... sometime between Friday and the year 2078. When the finalists are announced this suddenly becomes a democracy and you get to vote on the stupendously ultimate winner.
d) Please please check and double-check your entry before posting. If you spot an error in your post after entering:
please do not re-post your entry. I go through the entries sequentially and the repeated deja vu repeated deja vu of reading the same entry over and over again makes my head spin. I'm not worried about typos. You shouldn't be either.
e) You may enter once, once you may enter, and enter once you may. If you post anonymously please be sure and leave your name (no cheating on this one).
f) Spreading the word about the contest is very much encouraged. The more the merrier, and the greater your pride when you crush them all.
g) I will be the sole judge of the finalists. You the people will be the sole judge of the ultimate winner.
h) There is no word count limit on the paragraphs. However, a paragraph that is overly long or feels like more than a paragraph may lose points. It should be a paragraph, not multiple paragraphs masquerading as one paragraph. Use your own discretion.
i) You must be at least 14 years old and less than 178 years old to enter. No exceptions.
j) I'm on the
Twitter! And the
Facebook! And the
Google+! And the
Instagram! It is there I will be posting contest updates. Okay maybe not Instagram but pretty pictures!
That is all.
GOOD LUCK. May the best paragraph win and let us all have a grand old time.
 |
| Madison Square Park - Photo by me |
First of all, before I get to the bazillion links I have saved up... I smell something. Is that a... I think... why, yes, I think I know what that is. A CONTEST IS COMING.
And not just any contest. One of the
big huge ones. It's been too long. This one is going to be good. I'm very excited. Stick. Around.
Or maybe just come back on Monday. You don't need to literally stick around.
Now then, these links aren't going to link to themselves.
A new
Jacob Wonderbar is also coming next week! Yes indeedy, the third and final installment of the Jacob Wonderbar series,
Jacob Wonderbar and the Interstellar Time Warp, is coming out on Thursday! Make sure to pre-order so you and the kids in your life can be hipster middle grade readers and say you read it before it was all popular and stuff. I'm very excited to have this series all wrapped up and ready to be read in full:
Jacob Wonderbar and the Cosmic Space KapowJacob Wonderbar for President of the UniverseJacob Wonderbar and the Interstellar Time Warp
Whew! Excitement! I swear adults will enjoy them too. They're not just for kids.
Okay now for the real links.
Author Stephen Elliott had a great post called
The Problem With the Problem With Memoir, in which he has this priceless quote:
...celebrity memoirs are rarely interesting, despite how interesting their lives appear from the outside. The problem is not that they don’t live interesting lives, it’s that they’re not writers.
In book promotion news, a pertinent question for our age:
Why do literary readings always make me want to kill myself? (via
The Millions). And Adam Mansbach has a hilarious and very timely post on the state of book promotion:
Hell is my own book tour.
Gosh. If I didn't know any better I'd think authors
hate self-promotion.
In new book ventures, esteemed blog The Millions is
launching an e-book venture, and Random House is launching a Facebook app to help people
share and discover books.
When you're alone and life is making you lonely, you can always go downtown. When you've got no worries all the noise and the hurry seems to help I know, downtown. At least,
that's where HarperCollins is going.
In io9 writing advice news, these are the character names
that should be banned forever, and here is a
writing tip that really does work, in fact I have employed this one myself from time to time.
Agent Mary Kole has advice for
getting the most out of a writer's conference, and agent Rachelle Gardner has a new e-book out on
deciding between traditional and self-publication!
Publishing industry expert Mike Shatzkin had too good posts lately on
the importance of bookstore buying and inventory management decisions and also about what Barnes & Noble's recent
contraction announcement means for publishers.
In social media news, Scientific American has a terrific posts on the
pros and cons of comment threads and moderation.
GalleyCat has a list of
free places to back up your work online.
And award news!
You get a Newbery! You get a Caldecott! You get a Printz!These past few weeks in the forums: mourning
the end of Game of Thrones Season 2,
making meaning out of the adolescent years,
giving yourself permission to fail,
your 2013 writing goals, and do you
have to listen to everything a beta reader says?
And finally, a
seriously awesome article about love.
Have a great weekend!
By: Nathan Bransford,
on 1/31/2013
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The Super Bowl is this Sunday, and I won't be watching.
After I posted in May about the
ethics of watching football and how uncomfortable I am with the growing evidence about endemic and lasting brain injuries I stayed true to my post and I didn't watch football this year.
Of all the years.
Stanford made the Rose Bowl for the first time since I was in college back in 2000 (and this time they won). The 49ers are headed to the Super Bowl and Colin Kaepernick is one of the most exciting young players in football. But I've never seen him play.
To be honest, I haven't gone completely cold turkey. If I'm at someone's house or at a bar and football is on I don't leave the room or insist that people change the channel. I still read football articles and in fact could give you a pretty thorough breakdown of the Alex Smith vs. Colin Kaepernick decision. I still keep up with scores and records.
But I'm not watching, week in, week out. I can't tell you what a change this is. I was once the chairman of Stanford's
Axe Committee, which has its roots in the Stanford/Cal football rivalry. I'm not sure if I'll go to another Big Game. I grew up watching Joe Montana and Jerry Rice. I won't be watching the Super Bowl.
Junior Seau's death was the ultimate catalyst for my decision not to watch, and I made it without even knowing for sure whether he had the degenerative brain disease that has afflicted so many former players. It turns out
he did.
There is mounting evidence that the NFL
has not taken this issue seriously enough, but ultimately I think end of the sport will not come with a bunch of fans walking out of a stadium, but rather youth and high school teams unable to find insurance policies and forced to close up, a generation of parents pushing their kids into different sports, and a decline of the sport into the realm of horse racing and boxing.
For my part, in place of football on the weekends I've been watching, well, football. Soccer has become my weekend tradition. I wake up, fire up the coffee, and settle in for some writing and the English Premier League.
Anyone else find their habits changing as more news of former players emerge?
By: Nathan Bransford,
on 1/30/2013
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So. You ready to take the best 100 movie challenge?
This has been a random procrastination activity of mine for quite some time, and now I'm ready to share my list with the world. I have spent way, way too much time thinking about this.
Behold... my 100 favorite movies of all time!
But this isn't all! It would be great if we could all share our own list for the Top 100, because I love looking at these lists. If you create your 100 and post it in the comments section I'll add the links to this post.
- Casablanca
- The Godfather
- City of God
- The Godfather Part II
- Citizen Kane
- The Up Series
- The Empire Strikes Back
- Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
- Rushmore
- Jules and Jim
- Schindler's List
- The Shawshank Redemption
- Star Wars
- The Battle of Algiers
- Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory
- Trouble in Paradise
- The Nightmare Before Christmas
- The Warriors
- Monty Python and the Holy Grail
- Rebecca
- The Usual Suspects
- Children of Men
- Sunset Blvd.
- Giant
- Lawrence of Arabia
- The Wizard of Oz
- The Best Years of Our Lives
- Dog Day Afternoon
- Raging Bull
- Clockers
- The Manchurian Candidate
- Before Sunrise
- Goodfellas
- Groundhog Day
- The 25th Hour
- Manhattan
- E.T.
- Hoop Dreams
- Back to the Future
- The Bridge on the River Kwai
- The Last Picture Show
- Before Sunset
- Stagecoach
- The Big Lebowski
- The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly
- Gone With the Wind
- Office Space
- Into the Wild
- Ghost Dog
- Butch Cassidy and the Sudance Kid
- The Graduate
- Cat on a Hot Tin Roof
- Yojimbo
- Pulp Fiction
- Chinatown
- Ferris Bueller's Day Off
- Edward Scissorhands
- North By Northwest
- Duck Soup
- Saturday Night Fever
- The Truman Show
- Playtime
- Pinocchio
- A Hard Day's Night
- Le Samourai
- The Double Life of Veronique
- The Big Sleep
- Stray Dog
- The Philadelphia Story
- Charade
- Midnight Cowboy
- The Lives of Others
- True Grit
- Do the Right Thing
- Elf
- Rebel Without a Cause
- It's a Wonderful Life
- Singin' in the Rain
- Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown
- From Here to Eternity
- Apocalypse Now
- Coming to America
- Breathless
- Close Encounters of the Third Kind
- To Kill a Mockingbird
- Funny Face
- Serpico
- Frankenstein
- Hud
- Wings of Desire
- Dr. Zhivago
- His Girl Friday
- Patton
- Mildred Pierce
- Run Lola Run
- Suspicion
- Point Blank
- This is Spinal Tap
- Anchorman
- Army of Darkness
My Google Reader is feeling slim. Comment counts are down. Many of my blogging friends have either officially or unofficially hung up their hats. The ones who do blog do so far less often.
Two years ago I asked if
blogs have peaked, and that seems like an almost quaint question now. My blog traffic isn't actually down significantly even though I'm posting less often. According to Blogger this blog had 204,000+ pageviews in December, which is roughly where things were in 2010. But it feels like a lot more people are coming in via search engines and going through the archives than coming by day in day out.
I know my comments platform sucks, especially the unreadable CAPTCHA (I know, I know!), but what I find interesting is that more people now comment on the Facebook posts where I post the blog than they do on the blog itself.
Where have all the bloggers gone? What do you make of this change? Is everyone on Facebook and Twitter? Is everyone consuming more than producing? Am I just not in the right places?
And if you'd like to join the community on Facebook commenting you can follow me on Facebook
here:
Art: The Stone Bridge by Rembrandt
E-book growth
may be slowing, but that doesn't appear to be making a dent in the viability of large chain bookstores.
Barnes & Noble reportedly
plans to close a third of its stores over the next decade (link is to CNET, I work there proudly). That amounts to 20 stores closing a year over the next 10 years.
I've written in the past about how I found it likely that
chain bookstores would go the way of record stores into obsolescence, even as smaller, independent bookstores still plug on into the new era. This development is a reminder that it won't take 100% e-book adoption to threaten the viability of brick and mortar stores.
And these closures could further speed the adoption of e-books as people lose their bookstores and are forced to find their books elsewhere.
The publishing landscape is going to continue to shift very dramatically over the next decade. What do you make of this news? Are you ready for the new era?
Art: The Bibliophilist's Haunt or Creech's Bookshop by William Fettes Douglas
By: Nathan Bransford,
on 1/24/2013
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I'm by no means old, but I've lived long enough that I can mark the passage of time by the lives of others: I can remember the events around every presidential election since Bush/Dukakis, the players who were rookies when I started paying attention to basketball are in the process of retiring, and the actresses I have crushes on are starting to play moms.
But there's nothing quite like following a band over the course of a lifetime.
I had the great fortune of discovering my favorite band,
Yo La Tengo, when I was college and the Internet opened up the entire musical world to anyone who had the fast Ethernet connection to find it. YLT were already well into their musical careers in the late '90s, and since then they've not only remained together, they've remained really good, releasing a strong album every three years like clockwork.
When I listen to their albums now they evoke a pastiche of memories and images of where I was and what my life was like and what device I was using to listen to the album.
I went to a now-defunct record store to eagerly pick up
And Then Nothing Turned Itself Inside Out in 2000, very deep into the college experience, writing papers, with a sense that the future was in front of me. (CD player)
Summer Sun from 2003 evokes my early adult life in San Francisco, climbing hills and taking long walks home as the afternoon fog rolled in. (iPod)
I Am Not Afraid of You and I Will Beat Your Ass from 2006 conjures BART stations and hikes up a different hill - I had just moved back to San Francisco after a couple of years in New York and this was the soundtrack of my new commute and my return to California. (iPod with Video)
Popular Songs from 2009 is bittersweet, perched on the transition between being newly married and
things falling apart. The song "
Avalon or Someone Very Similar" was the soundtrack for a happy end-of-year recap video, "
All Your Secrets" encapsulated that sense of hanging on, "
And the Glitter is Gone" was a fitting coda. (iPhone 3G)
Now Yo La Tengo just released a fantastic new album,
Fade, and I'm in a new place with a new life, and I'm sure in the future it will make me remember this time of transition into whatever is ahead of me. (iPhone 5)
I've seen YLT countless times in concerts too, but strangely, even as the audiences age with the rockers themselves, those concerts feel like points of continuity rather than marking the passage of time. Instead of bringing us back to the past, concerts blur into timelessness and remove everything but the now. It's those quiet moments listening to albums on our own that take us back in time.
Music has such a strange power. It certainly doesn't feel at all momentous when you're listening to a new song, but that song places an anchor in your brain and it takes nothing but a repeat listen years later to bring memories rushing back to a time you might never have remembered without it.
Here's "
Ohm" from
Fade, with its reminder that nothing ever stays the same:
By: Nathan Bransford,
on 1/23/2013
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Like many out there on the Internet, I was rather shocked by
Harper's Magazine publisher John R. MacArthur's
recent broadside against Google. I wasn't horrified because I disagree with the sentiment, though I do, but because it displayed shocking ignorance and incuriosity about one of the most important powers shaping the future of words.
If you harbor fears about whether the leaders of traditional publishing are equipped to shepherd their institutions into a digital era, I urge you not to read it.
I'm sure I don't have to remind you about the storied history of
Harper's Magazine, founded in 1850, the place where Moby-Dick first found print, and one of the important literary institutions this country has ever produced.
As Mathew Ingram points out in a
similarly horrified response to MacArthur's screed, other old media publishers like
The Atlantic have thrived by
innovating in the Internet era with a stellar roster of bloggers, new formats, and a firm embrace of the era of Teh Google.
In fact, it was
Atlantic Senior Editor Alexis Madrigal who had one of the best retorts to MacArthur's lament that Harper's does not readily apfpear when one Googles "magazines that publish essays."
I don't blame people for being disquieted by the rapid rise of new technology and the effects it has on our lives, and there is also a long tradition of
literary technophobia that MacArthur is seemingly stepping into.
I do blame people for incuriosity and failure to investigate the enemies you see in your midst. I do blame people for failing to adapt to the inevitabilities of the future. It's not Google's job to do your work for you and bring readers to you because... why again? It's your job to understand how Google works and adapt accordingly so your existing readers can find what they're looking for and so you can attract new ones.
You can cover your ears and eyes and shout as the future approaches, but prepared to get drowned as the tide washes over you.
Photo by me
A few months back, my former colleague Sarah LaPolla wrote a
very important blog post that everyone looking for an agent should read.
There are a lot of agents out there. Some of them are fantastic. They came up through an apprenticeship process and worked hard for an established agent before they knew enough to take on clients. When they started taking on clients they were prepared, and now they have lots of sales under their belts.
Others just hung out a shingle. Maybe they had some connection to the business, maybe it was just a life-long dream, maybe they got fed up and decided if you can't beat 'em become one.
The hardest thing is, some of these non-legit agents
don't know they're not legit. They have the best intentions, they may be good, hard-working people. But there's a lot more to being an agent than knowing how to read a contract or possessing a rolodex.
A bad agent can be more damaging to your career than no agent. There are bad agents out there. Learn how to avoid them.
Read Sarah's post. Make sure the agent who wants to represent you is legit-legit.
Don't be scared of a young agent at a very established agency. Do be skeptical of someone who doesn't seem to have a great deal of experience and is working on their own.
Art: Double Portrait by Raphael
By: Nathan Bransford,
on 1/14/2013
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Like many of you noble lords and ladies, I have been thoroughly sucked into the period costume drama slash soap opera Downton Abbey, with its potboiler plot lines (Cousin back from the dead! Or is he!), breathtaking pace (pretty sure World War I was over in half an episode) and brilliant Maggie Smith one-liners.
What's amazing about a drama as well-received as Downton Abbey is the sheer simplicity of its moral universe. The good characters are good and the bad characters are bad. That's that. No one learns lessons, no one evolves (with the possible exception of Miss O'Brien), no one is especially complicated. Carson will always be dignified and Thomas the footman will always be a jerk. We don't exactly spend a lot of time plumbing the depths of souls.
What's even more amazing to me is the extent to which the good characters are measured by their devotion to an aristocratic universe that is usually vaguely unseemly and sometimes outright reprehensible. The good members of the staff are those who are wholly devoted to the maintenance of a system in which their employers live in opulent, lazy and unearned extravagance while they are lucky if they have the free time to find time to date, let alone reproduce.
But whatever, we love it! Who's ready for a fancy dinner?
How in the name of Kemal Pamuk do they pull this off? (I mean. Aside from the fact that everyone and everything looks fabulous.)
For one thing, the makers are fantastic at finding the seams in characters' competing desires and priorities and bringing them out in a heartwarming way. We all know that Maggie Smith's character is an unabashed devotee of aristocratic privilege and tradition (Dowager Countess: "What is a weekend?"), but she is also, at heart, the biggest advocate for the unity of the family.
So (mild spoiler), when we find out that she is the one who sent the money for Lady Sybil and her low-born Irish husband to travel back for Lady Mary's wedding, we are pleased and surprised that she set aside her distaste for his horrid apparel in favor of having her granddaughter present. Love of family > tradition.
A similar dynamic also works with the Earl of Grantham. Nearly every plotline on the show: He tries to adhere to tradition and the ways of the past, which ends up upsetting his daughters, and he caves to their wishes after a touching conversation. Love of daughters > aristocracy.
We like to see characters do the right thing when presented with competing options, and the creators of Downton Abbey are really skilled at creating situations where characters' honor are tested.
This ends up getting a little odd when it comes to the staff, as the ones who are good are the ones who are self-effacing enough to succeed in a world where doing the right thing involves preserving a world that sucks up their humanity lest the people who live upstairs have to lift a finger. We are charmed by the butler Carson's prideful attention to detail and Mrs. Hughes' polite competence (occupational competency > personal life) without being horrified that their entire lives revolve around the needs and desires of a group of people who have done less work in their lifetimes than the staff do in a day.
The third season started last week and there were hints that the newly arrived American Martha Levinson, Lady Grantham's mother, would shake up the moral compass that underlies the show, and there seems to be some dawning awareness that perhaps one should do something with one's life besides employ a staff with an acquired fortune, judge local flower contests and host fancy parties.
And this is why the show faithfully keeps up with one of the
important characteristics about a great setting. It's not just the beautiful surroundings. In a great setting,
change is underway that impacts the character' lives. The aristocracy, and Downton Abbey itself, seems to be headed for a reckoning.
We'll see, anyway. Something tells me the Dowager Countess will win in the end. As she herself said, "Don't be so defeatist, dear. It's very middle class."
By: Nathan Bransford,
on 1/7/2013
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Anyone who has reacted with horror to the recent brutal rape in India that
inspired mass protests, or, rather, anyone period, should check out C.Y. Gopinath's brilliant satirical novel
The Book of Answers.
I had the great pleasure of working as Gopi's agent as he first conceived of and then wrote this book, and while his incredible prose was why I took him on to be my first client, and the way
The Book of Answers came together into a incredible novel is why it ended up being
published and nominated for awards, I don't know that I fully appreciated until now the extent to which Gopi is also blessed with incredible prescience as well.
The Book of Answers about a man, Patros, who comes into possession of one of the most coveted items in the world, a book that contains all the answers to all of mankind's problems. Patros wants nothing to do with it. He ditches it at a junk shop, only to see an Indian politician use the book for his own nefarious gain. Patros has to decide whether he's going to turn a blind eye to the world's problems or regain his youthful idealism, an idealism that hinges on women's rights and standing up to atrocities like the one that has recently galvanized protestors.
This is a novel of right now, I think it's a book that people will return to read in the future, and I can't recommend it highly enough.
Add it on Goodreads or buy it
here.
By: Nathan Bransford,
on 1/4/2013
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As if my blogging hasn't sporadic enough with the craziness of the holidays, next week is CES, land of 100" TVs and 18-hour-work days! Yes, I am headed to Las Vegas for the Consumer Electronics Show, where the devices of tomorrow are gawked at by the nerds of today. It's always a lot of fun, if rather crazy for us CNETers.
The best way to keep track of the madness is to follow us on Twitter or like us on Facebook. Just be warned that your feeds will be a deluge of new gadget wizardry.
Meanwhile, there have been some interesting links the past few weeks, and I aim to share them with you.
Influential and popular blogger Andrew Sullivan made an influential and in some circles very popular move by going independent with his blog, breaking off from the Daily Beast and charging readers $19.99 for full access. Can he make it pay, many asked? Well, so far he's apparently racked up a third of a million dollars.
Speaking of making it pay, Random House had quite a banner year thanks in large part to Fifty Shades of Grey, and Random House employees were treated to $5,000 shades of green.
Legendary author and Twitter maven Margaret Atwood is making a play of independence of her own. She'll be serializing a new novel called Positron serially on a site called Byliner. (via The Millions)
In roundup news, The Atlantic surveyed the best middle grade and YA books of 2012, GalleyCat rounded up a collection of successful query letters, and Kristin Nelson continued her popular tradition of year-end stats.
And perhaps the most disturbing book article of 2012 was brought to you by library books and bedbugs.
Over in the Forums, why do you want to be published and why do you write, which social media site do you use the most, mental illness in fiction, why bad writing is an oxymoron and, of course, what makes for the great American novel.
Comment! of! the! Week! In yesterday's post I suggested that perhaps we could readily tell real reviews from fake ones. Not so, says Chris Shaw:
Actually it's pretty much proven at this point that no, we can't pick out the false reviews ourselves. I'm having trouble finding some of the studies, namely the one I came across when this controversy first came out, which says humans identify the false one about 50% of the time--no better than guessing.This study gives some good info on the poor performance of humans in this matter, due to truth bias (we'll say something is true 88% of the time... whoops). A couple articles say that 30% of reviews are fake, and this one says 70% of consumers trust online reviews, so I'm betting we're missing just a few of them. Google the work by Cornell, MIT, U of Illinois Chicago, and some national economics group to find even more studies affirming that humans suck at telling when reviews are fake.
Am I happy with what Amazon did? No. But it's warranted. Like it or not, we all actually were born yesterday in this game. It's the the best Amazon can do for us until they get more sophisticated at it (or one of those aforementioned universities gets their fake-fighting tech ready for prime time).
And finally, it was the 150th anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation, and there have of course lately been many Lincoln tributes and the Spielberg movie. One of the most fascinating things I've ever read about Lincoln was
a speech by Frederick Douglass, who delivered an incredible assessment a decade after his death. (via
Ta-Nehisi Coates)
Have a great weekend!
By: Nathan Bransford,
on 1/3/2013
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Last month there was yet another Amazon review kerfuffle, as it was revealed that Amazon has been undergoing a review purge aimed at friend-and-family
rating manipulation and sockpuppetry.
On the one hand, like many others I cringed at the revelation that some well-respected authors have
unabashedly paid for sockpuppet reviews.
At the same time, isn't it pretty easy to tell the difference between a critical review or a true rave from a fake one? Haven't we all honed our BS-detection skills to the extent that we find a representative review that we implicitly trust and manage to filter out the others?
What do you think? Are online reviews due for a necessary correction or should Amazon and others let us be the filter?
Art: The Puppet Show by Albert Rosenboom
As always there were so many more books that I wanted to read than was able to in 2012, but it was still a pretty good year for reading. Of all the books you read that were published in 2012, which one was your favorite?
Mine was
Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn, and I'm guessing I'm not alone.
If it's possible for a book to be a megabestseller while remaining underrated, I think
Gone Girl is it. You hear people talk about how gripping it is, how readable, and it certainly is, but it's also ridiculously well-written. This was a cracking mystery bordering on literary fiction levels of psychological and cultural insight and prose quality.
Could there be some lingering gender or genre bias at play in 2012? Would
Gone Girl have been received differently if it were written by someone named Jonathan? Are we still predisposed to not considering mysteries as possessing serious literary chops?
 |
| The library in Google's New York office. Photo by me. |
2012 was a year of hurricanes and recovery, tragedies and an election, divisions and compromise, promise and ominousness. The apocalypse didn't take place, but the future does not feel won. The new millennium is transitioning from a rocky adolescence into a turbulent adulthood and it's difficult to say where things are going to go. The economic malaise feels more like a labyrinth than a long, deep tunnel.
2012 was the year that social media went from fad to fact of life, so much so that way may stop talking about it as anything other than our new, interconnected reality, in the way that we stopped breathlessly discussing the Web and the Information Superhighway at the end of last decade. (2013 should also be the year we retro-cool the term "The 'Net" back into parlance).
2012 was the year that the shiny new promise of cheaper tablets led to catapulting sales at the same time that e-book adoption rates
appear to have leveled off, which has been greeted with some
happy tut-tutting in some paper-loving book circles, but which strikes me as deeply concerning at a time when
dedicated e-reader sales may be headed for the cliff.
Books and magazines have enjoyed a near monopoly in portable handheld entertainment for a hundred years (Game Boys and other handhelds notwithstanding), but if they can't compete with the other diversions on an iPad, books may (start? continue?) a long slide in cultural consciousness and possibly sales. If people aren't going to read books with what's already in their hands, when
are they going to read?
2013 looks to be the year when even takeoff and landing, that last refuge of print monopoly and "my paperback doesn't need batteries" joshing,
may be electronically-integrated.
And demonstrating the power of the rise of social media and cover-concealing e-readers and tablets,
Fifty Shades of Grey catapulted from obscurity to cultural phenomenon. It's hard to imagine a book that better demonstrates the potency of the forces shaping our new crowd-driven, gatekeeper-less culture.
And for me personally, 2013 is a truly new start. I'm back in Brooklyn, the Jacob Wonderbar trilogy will wrap in just a month with the publication of
Jacob Wonderbar and the Interstellar Time Warp, and I'm very excited about new projects and new beginnings.
Meanwhile, thanks to everyone for your generosity with our recent
Heifer fundraiser, and especially to the other participants, whose blogs you should definitely check out:
Catherine Ryan HydeAnne MackinMy Karma Jumped Over My DogmaT.K.'s TalesMira's Corner100 First DraftsTales From the MotherlandDaily AdventuresProving the power of social media, tweets surpassed blog comments for the first time in my fundraiser, and there were nearly 250 between the two. I went ahead and rounded up my $2 pledge:
Happy New Year, have a safe and prosperous 2013, and thank you so much to everyone for reading this blog!
By: Nathan Bransford,
on 12/24/2012
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I
have it on good authority that Santa is currently making his way around the world, but you still have time to do some giving of your own!
It's easy: just stop by these eight generous blogs, leave comments, and spread the giving to a great cause!
Catherine Ryan HydeAnne MackinMy Karma Jumped Over My DogmaT.K.'s TalesMira's Corner100 First DraftsTales From the MotherlandDaily AdventuresAnd don't forget, you can leave comments on
my original post, or tweet #NBHeifer with this link: http://bit.ly/V78KCz and every one means $2 more for Heifer.
Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays!
By: Nathan Bransford,
on 12/22/2012
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Our
Heifer International fundraiser is in full swing! Here are the participating blogs so far, please stop by them, comment, and spread the word about a really great cause!
Catherine Ryan HydeAnne MackinMy Karma Jumped Over My DogmaT.K.'s TalesMira's Corner100 First DraftsDon't forget, every tweet with #NBHeifer and this link: http://bit.ly/V78KCz means $2 for Heifer! And you can
comment on the original post as well.
There's still time to join the giving with your own pledge, just add a comment with a link to your blog
in the main post.
Thanks so much to everyone for participating! Let's keep the giving going!
By: Nathan Bransford,
on 12/19/2012
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Woo hoo! Time for our annual Heifer International blog fundraising goodness where we spread the cheer for an incredibly worthy cause and try to multiple the giving.
All you have to do to enter is to leave a comment on this post OR tweet a link to this post (http://bit.ly/V78KCz) and include the hashtag #NBHeifer to help raise money for a great cause. Then click over to the other participating blogs at the bottom of this post and do the same thing.
And, better yet, to multiply the giving, if you want in on the fun you can do a per-comment pledge on your own blog! It can be any amount, from ten cents to a million dollars. Totally up to you. Just leave a comment with a link to your blog post or tweet announcing your pledge or
e-mail it to me and I'll feature it in this post. (Let me know if you need help tracking your hashtag).
You may have already heard of
Heifer International, an organization that works to fight hunger by giving needy families around the world and in the United States livestock, training, or other assistance that helps improve their livelihood. Heifer has been recognized for its work in
Fast Company and
Forbes, among other places.
If you have anything to spare this holiday season I hope you'll consider making a donation. And in order to encourage people to spread the word about this worthy cause, there are two ways to help increase the giving love (and feel free to do both):
- For every comment someone makes in this post between now and 6PM Pacific time on December 24, I will donate $2.00.
- For every tweet that includes a) the hashtag #NBHeifer and b) a link back to this post (http://bit.ly/V78KCz) I will donate another $2.00. (up to $2,000 between the two)
We can encourage everyone to stop by so we can multiply the giving! Over the past three years we raised over $5,000 together.
Please click over to these participating blogs:
Catherine Ryan Hyde
By: Nathan Bransford,
on 12/18/2012
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In case you haven't seen the news, Instagram sent the Internet sputtering when they changed their terms of service that
gives them the ability to license photos.
In my take for
CNET, I argue that providing the platform shouldn't mean owning the content, and Instagram has reminded us yet again that
when the service is free, we are the product.
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These made me laugh. My students thank you.
Pre-queries? Now that's a hoot.
~jon
This is awesome.
You rock. These are excellent.
"No author spammed their way ... " please, please, please hammer this one home!
I know it's a tough line to toe, promotion versus spam-ese. People need to learn how to turn the volume down on their own work.
Best way to do it? Promote other people's work ... like a fox. Karma will, in turn, reward you. Consider this shared!
I'm doing it. I'm adding a space monkey to my WIP. I shall call him Weever.
I especially loved "Conflict is a novel's oxygen: It needs conflict to survive but burn it too quickly and you'll suffocate before the end", and the William Faulkner quote. All great advice.
Great tweets, and informative too! I didn't know there was such a thing as pre-query, or that people were sending them out. I especially like the tweet about memoirs; I think it's definitely true because some writers can make even the most ordinary things, like going to Wal-mart or baking a cake, sound entertaining enough that it motivates you to keep reading...and reading.
you should start your own line of cookies. Excellent advice!
I didn't even know there was such a thing as a prequery. I am glad to hear it is a step in the process that I can skip over..
These are great, start to finish, Nathan.
I'll take this one as my fave: "Great settings in books are just as alive, changing, and memorable as the characters themselves." -- only because writers so often fall too far on one side of this fence or the other. While setting might not be The Star, it is still important!
Maybe we should get ALL of our writing advice in this delightfully short-winded form! -grin-
So g;ad I was able to catch up and read these gems all in one convenient place. Thanks!
This is a great list! And I'm so glad you're going to add to keep adding to it!
Some gems of wisdom here. I especially liked the one about first person/elevator, since I write first voice. Very true, and good to keep in mind!
So, I finished the first Jacob, and it is so fun. I just started the second one. "We don't negotiate with space monkeys"! Ha, ha, ha, ha - that is my favorite line - too funny. :)
Working my way up to the third! :)
"If you want to be a writer you need to know how to use a computer." Totally agree, but if you can read this pearl of tweetvice you don't need it!
Loving this archive, much easier than sifting through a twitter feed.
These are great! Glad I found you, (through Stumbleupon - that site has much to offer). I'm currently blogging memoirs and hope to turn some of them into a book. It is challenging to make things interesting.