Category: on writing
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The proper application of the literary critique “fridging”
As I mentioned yesterday, I’ve decided to take a break from Tumblr. The negativity has started to actively stress me out, and it troubles me how hard it is to talk about anything nuanced on there. The phenomenon of backlash exists in response to actual problems in additions to attempts to deal with those problems.…
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Bechdel-ing my work
I made myself a promise that anything I wrote longer than than ten minutes was going to pass the Bechdel Test. It is not a very high bar to include at least two female characters who talk to each other about the point of the story/something besides a man, so I am determined to do…
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On writing comedy
As I have occasionally mentioned before on this blog, I don’t think I’m the most talented when it comes to writing comedy. I like to think of myself as a fairly witty person, who can make you laugh with a clever remark in conversation now and again. But when it comes to coming up with…
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Letting my characters be my characters
I have a fear of letting my characters be my characters. While art that works is art that works, and it’s often difficult to quanitify exactly what makes one piece compelling while another one isn’t, there are generally some guidelines to good storytelling. Drama requires conflict. Stakes should be high. There must be an arc…
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The Problem of the Protagonist
As media critics we are bored and fed up with many of the racist, misogynist, and queerphobic storytelling tropes we see taken for granted in mass media. Men motivated by dead women and daddy issues. Women killed to further the emotional arc of a man. Women needing to be rescued. Queer people getting killed off…
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Musing on muses, part 1
Artists have a long tradition of drawing inspiration for their art from various muses, and the more I think about it, the more I realize I do as well. The traditional artist-muse relationships tends to be a man being inspired by a woman, but I have always been prone to drawing creative energy from people,…
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Sex in my writing
I don’t write about sex much. I don’t know if those of you who have read much of my work have noticed that, but I tend not to deal with it very often. To be frank, I think there’s something approaching a prudishness in a lot of my writing— not a lot of exploration of…
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The drafting process
The drafting process doesn’t come naturally to me, and as such, at times I find it frustrating. During my early development as a writer, I was extremely compelled to edit as I wrote, and if I couldn’t figure out just how I wanted to phrase something, I wouldn’t write it. That lead to nothing ever…
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The tradeoff for plot
As a writer, plot is very important to me. I care about other things too, of course– character, voice, style, things like that –but I have a very hard time getting invested in a story unless "something interesting happens" in it. It also happens to be part of the writing process I'm pretty good at.…
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Strengths and weaknesses as a writer
It’s residency week for my grad school, and as alums are allowed to attend certain seminars, I’ve been back a bit. I also wanted to be there to hear the readings of some of my colleagues’ plays. I was particularly struck this time around by “The Deep Purple,” by Andy Landis, because even without any…
Phoebe Roberts 