This Garbage Brought to You By the Letters S-E-O: How Google Is Ruining Writing
If you’ve been on the internet for a while, you may have heard about SEO, or “Search Engine Optimization.” From casinos to cannabis seo, it is part of every business to succeed online. But do you know...
View ArticleGiving and Receiving Criticism Gracefully, or How Not to Be Anne Rice
Being criticized sucks. If you’re a writer and you’re putting your work out into the world for other people to see, you’re going to receive criticism. But criticism is an immense part of writing well....
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How To Write Dark Humor Without Sounding Like a Total Sociopath
Dark humor has always been tricky to pull off. If you do it right, it can be amazing. But if you don’t, you come off as a edgelord trying too hard to offend people. Of course, humor is subjective — but...
View ArticleReed Gud, Part 1, or Other Books Than ‘Harry Potter’ Exist: Fiction
In this week’s episode, R.S. Benedict is joined by Gareth and Langdon of Death Sentence, a podcast about books for people who hate books, podcasts and capitalism but like metal. And in order to Rite...
View ArticleReed Gud, Part 2: Poetry, Literature in a Foreign Language, Nonfiction and...
A followup to the last episode, R.S. Benedict is again joined by Gareth and Langdon of Death Sentence, a podcast about books for people who hate books, podcasts and capitalism but like metal. In this...
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The White Room, or Paying Attention to Sensory Details
In this episode, learn a simple exercise that will help you cultivate your inner witness. It might even help with your anxiety, too. Sources/Additional Reading: KonMari Fallout 4‘s skulls near the...
View ArticleWriting Mary Sues, or What Even IS a Mary Sue?
In this episode, special guest Jennifer Albright of Have You Seen This? drops by to talk about Mary Sues, a term used to describe an overly-perfect female character created as a self-insertion wish...
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Men Writing Women (Badly)
R.S. Benedict and guest Meg talk about the creepy, objectifying, or just plain ridiculous way that all too many male authors write female characters. No one is spared as we poke fun at your favorites...
View ArticleGuns: How to Feature Them in a Realistic Way
Tons of stories feature guns, but they’re usually portrayed in a wildly unrealistic way. Nate Bethea of What a Hell of a Way to Die was kind enough to stop by to talk to us about what writers get wrong...
View ArticleNo More Heroes with JR Dawson
Much of speculative literature focuses on superheroes and Chosen Ones. But what about ordinary people or flawed people who don’t save the world? Do they matter? Sci-fi/fantasy author JR Dawson joins us...
View ArticleOriginality: Feh, Who Needs It?
RS Benedict talks to Stephen Mazur, Assistant Editor of The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, about originality. How important is it, really? Readers and editors say they crave original...
View ArticleThe Dark Side of Fandom, Part 1: Have You Accepted Spider-Man as Your Lord...
Tim Heiderich of Have You Seen This took the time to talk to us about the creative perils of fandom. Fandom can be fun, but it can also turn ugly too, or it can keep us so busy focusing on someone...
View ArticleThe Dark Side of Fandom Part 2: Friendship Simulator
Why do people love the Disney corporation? Why do people watch other people play video games? Can fans influence creatives’ work for the worse? Does the mainstreaming of geek culture represent a...
View ArticleWriter Beware! Spotting Shady Agents, Vanity Presses and Other Scams
The road to publishing can be a thorny one, filled with con artists lying in wait to pounce on unwary writers. Fortunately, Victoria Strauss of Writer Beware is here to tell us how to avoid being...
View ArticleCreepypasta and Other Eerie Starches
In this spooktacular episode, we talk to Ash and Jon of the Horror Vanguard podcast about the internet-based form of horror fiction known as creepypasta. In a culture increasingly controlled by a small...
View ArticleTransgressive Queer Fiction and the Right to Be Messy
Straight writers frequently portray cisgender heterosexual characters with twisted sexual pathologies or dysfunctional, miserable relationships. But when an emerging sci-fi writer published a sharp,...
View ArticleWriting While the World Burns: What Does It Mean to Be a Writer During the...
In this episode, we talk to writer/editor Sarena Ulibarri about what it means to be a writer during a global climate crisis. Do writers have a responsibility to address the problem? Are we a part of...
View ArticleWriting the Body: Avoiding Characters Who Are Brains-In-Jars (Unless That’s...
In this episode, writer and stuntwoman SL Huang joins us to talk about writing that fully explores the physicality of its characters. How can we write characters who feel like flesh and blood people,...
View ArticleTelling Your Own Stories
When Stephen Mazur, Assistant editor at The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, interviews writers, he always asks them this question: “Why do you write?” One of the most common answers is:...
View ArticleA Wretched Episode of Scum and Villainy
Villains in fiction tend to fit a certain template: erudite, aristocratic, queer-coded, monologuing and vaguely British.buy Pepcid generic buy Pepcid online generic There’s nothing wrong with that, but...
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