My muse is a bit of a bitch. Oftentimes when I’m away from my computer I’ll be struck by a thought–a simple line of dialogue or a facial expression or a freeze frame as though from a movie–and find myself fumbling over my phone trying to capture it. And many times I capture it exactly as […]
My first time playing Pathfinder I created a typical human fighter, you know the kind: the battle-worn, slow but tough warrior with a greatsword. He was as cliche and uninteresting as a monk without a name. But as I grew more comfortable with the game’s mechanics and my fighter died because I picked out terrible equipment for him (not […]
I recall as a young writer the greatest and, at times, only flaw in my protagonists was in their lack of flaws. Just as readers and viewers tire of 2-dimensional villains, so do they bore of porcelain-faced protagonists, especially those seemingly unaware of their perfections. Why Do We Make Our Characters Flawed? As writers, we dwell in the fantastical […]
As comic book movies dominate the film industry and television networks continue regurgitating the same maniacal CSI franchises and Gossip Bitch dramas, it’s hard to see such a vast array of villains who are so much alike. Why are we so afraid of making villains likeable–isn’t that how most villainous tycoons get to be successful in all […]
More than 40 percent of Americans will be diagnosed with cancer at some point in their lives. It’s a horrifying statistic, but what’s more terrible is that we’re not really sure why cancer has such a high prevalence. There’s genetic disposition, of course, and chance, but that can’t account for every instance. Sandra Steingraber, an ecologist […]
I had a screenwriting class with Randall Wallace late into my undergraduate career, and even though I didn’t always agree with his method of teaching, he taught me a very important thing about writers: we are at a greater risk for mental illness. A 2012 study by researchers at Karolinska Institute in Sweden looked at 1.2 […]
Gaming for a Change
When 17-year-old Zach Wigal first began organizing a Halo 2 tournament for his classmates at Saline High School, he never dreamt he’d start doing it for a living. After three months of planning, his Halo tournament was serendipitously cancelled by a superintendent after a local police officer raised concerns that video games were “corrupting the […]