This week Gutter Guest Darryl Shaw fills in for Screen Editor alex MacFadyen. “I recognize terror as the finest emotion and so I will try to terrorize the reader. But if I find that I cannot terrify, I will try to horrify, and if I find that I […]
A confession: I’m having trouble making my way through Stephen King’s Under the Dome. I must also confess I’m a bit puzzled by this. I’m definitely a fan of King’s work. And from what I’ve read so far, this book sticks pretty closely to high points of his […]
Linda Holmes says, “Thank Goodness Stephen King is making backbreaking, self-indulgent doorstops again.” And she means it.
1. Overture IslandOn December 4, 2008, the future ended. The event that marked its end was the death of a 92-year old man from the not uncommon cause of heart failure. It would not have been an epoch-ending event save for one detail: the man’s name was Forest […]
Fighting the Thieves’ Guild. Beautiful wenches, dazzling swordplay, heaps of treasure, dark spells. Where do all these cliches come from? A lot of them are from people who ripped off Fritz Lieber, who could write circles around just about anybody. And show us a good time doing it […]
Flatter your reader. That sounds like a pretty solid narrative strategy! Make your audience think they are really smart, and they’ll probably come back for more. Books can do this automatically, just by the virtue of taking us into the thoughts of other people – not so easy […]
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The Cultural Gutter 