I’m not trying to scare anybody. If that somehow happens as a result of reading this comic, that’s great, but really… that’s not what this book is about. What you hold in your hands is the most serious piece of work I’ve done so far in my career. I’m the…
What do I see stirring around the Gallows? —Faust Ah, what is this I hear? Could it be the moaning of the evening North Wind, or the sighing of a hanged man at the sinister crossroads? Could it be the singing of a cricket burrowed into the moss and bleak…
From The Paris Review’s interview with Kurt Vonnegut: VONNEGUT When you exclude plot, when you exclude anyone’s wanting anything, you exclude the reader, which is a mean-spirited thing to do. You can also exclude the reader by not telling him immediately where the story is taking place, and who the…
In this interview, Slate’s Jacob Weisberg talks to novelist Jonathan Lethem, who recently left Brooklyn to go to California to teach creative writing to undergrads at Pomona College—a post once held by the late David Foster Wallace. Two highlights. Weisberg starts off by expressing surprise that Lethem, who did not…
Here’s Louis CK talking about Louie, the best show on TV: It’s me up there, but it’s… It’s “autobiographical fiction,” I call it sometimes, it’s the way I would act in those situations. But I’m being myself mostly. Although I let myself make huge terrible mistakes than I wouldn’t make…
Here’s Kurt Vonnegut once again on how to write a story. Note: #8 is wrong, but #3 is the probably most important thing you’ll ever learn about writing. Use the time of a total stranger in such a way that he or she will not feel the time was wasted….
8 Rules for Writing Use the time of a total stranger in such a way that he or she will not feel the time was wasted. Give the reader at least one character he or she can root for. Every character should want something, even if it is only a…
