A JOKE, ANECDOTE, OR SHAGGY-DOG story should be no longer than necessitated by the redemptive power of its punch line.
Tag: craft
The “writing” part of Writing.
Metaphoraging Roundup 2020
AS THE EARTH RETURNS IN its orbit to where it was last year, here is a look at the top ten posts The Metaphorager’s readers enjoyed (I hope) during the past twelve months: My Favorite Jewish Joke – 80 Views…
5 Thoughts: The Grand Old Process
1. THERE IS A CERTAIN COMPULSION to the act of writing: an unscratchable itch that won’t let the fingers refrain from their fruitless but busy task, whether on paper or keyboard. 2. To ask writers “Why do you write?” is…
I AM A FANTASY WRITER; that is to say, I fantasize about people reading my writings.”
–Your author, in a truth-pensive mood
5 Thoughts: Seminal v. Derivative
1. ONE OF THE CHICKEN-OR-egg challenges of modern media (social and traditional) is their pervasive sense of nonlinear immediacy, by which I mean the everything-at-once flattening of the artistic landscape.
Elevator Pitch: The Cook For Any Price
“A SELF-DEFROCKED HOLYMAN WANDERS A fantastic landscape, eking out a meager but honest living as a mercenary cook.” (Intrigued?)
Don’t let the plot get in the way of the story.”
— Anon.
20 Observations on Newspaper Reporting
ALTHOUGH THEY RELY ON THEM, few people say they actually trust the news media. (I call it “Ross’ Paradox.”) Everybody has a story. And many want to share it. Newswriting is a form of reality-creation, wherein readers trust you to…
“…And Just Exactly What Is A ‘Buopoth?'”
“MUCH HAS BEEN WRITTEN ABOUT the quaint and lumbering buopoths native to the Exilic Lands and other curious places – but to this day, little remains understood about the shy beasts beyond the proverb that ‘they will haul all day…
Welcome to My World … Literally and Literarily
O Fellow Connoisseurs of Mythic Fiction (and Gastronomy), please: Lend me your eyes. For many years now, I have been writing occasional fantasy tales about Prosatio Silban: a self-defrocked holyman turned mercenary cook in a far-off land containing a vast…
5 Thoughts: The Third Thing
1. ONE OF THE THINGS THAT frustrates me as a writer is my own self-limitation. Specifically, I am speaking of the notoriously difficult and bothersome Third Thing. 2. The Third Thing works like this. I will write a sentence that…
Pithyism #69b
DO WE RESEMBLE OUR TOOLS, or do our tools resemble us? (I’m including in this equation notional tools like webspace, word-processing software, Facebook’s post-ranking choices, etc.)