Tag: writing
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How EL James Exploited the Fanfic Community for Fifty Shades of Grey
“She used the community to get her book to #1 then shut the door on them all.”
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A Glorious 'Benjamin Button' Takedown
A thorough skewering: “Written by Eric Roth, writer of Forrest Gump, the thing read as though a studio executive had come to Roth with the conceit – a man ages backwards – and the assignment to turn that conceit into Forrest Gump 2. Mission sort of accomplished. Consider: a southern boy born into a body […]
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How Shakespeare Invented Modern Storytelling
“It’s 1594, and Romeo & Juliet is premiering; let’s take a look around to see what else is out there. It…sucks. There’s Christopher Marlowe (who might have given Shakespeare a run for his money if he hadn’t gone and gotten himself killed), and that’s about it (Ben Jonson hadn’t happened yet). Other than that, you’ve […]
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The White Correspondent’s Burden
“But this doesn’t explain why journalism from Africa looks and sounds as it does. For this, we blame our editors, who (we like to say) oversimplify our copy and cut out context. … For these tendencies, our editors in turn often blame readers, whom they assume can’t or won’t follow us through villages with difficult-to-pronounce names […]
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How to Write About Africa
“In your text, treat Africa as if it were one country. It is hot and dusty with rolling grasslands and huge herds of animals and tall, thin people who are starving. Or it is hot and steamy with very short people who eat primates. Don’t get bogged down with precise descriptions. Africa is big: fifty-four […]
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Jonathan Franzen's Shtick
“It seems like everyone wants to get on the Jonathan Franzen bandwagon of being a cranky contrarian about innocuous things people like. In unrelated news, my new book, Puppies and Kittens Are Giant Assholes is coming out soon. Enjoy the chapter about how butterflies are racist and don’t courtesy flush.” via Steve Almond vs. Jon Stewart […]