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Author Archives: Christopher Johnstone
Comic Book Plots: The Problem Of Motionless Action
Allegedly, one of the great realisations of comic writers in the ’70s was that comics could have long story arcs, helping them escape an otherwise episodic formula, but the trick was to find a way to make the action appear to be important when no resolution or real forward momentum was actually possible. Villains and heroes would swap sides, love triangles would form and dissolve, stunning reveals would litter the pages and in the end, nothing would really ever happen. It was (and still is) a mass of spectacular action with no movement. Continue reading
Self-Publishing In The Age Of Information Overload #1
This is the start of a new series in which I’ll be examining self-publishing in it’s various incarnations. Self-publishing has gone from being a dirty word among authors to being the hot new thing that everyone is talking about. Only, it isn’t exactly a hot new thing. The image is a page from Charles Dickens’s manuscript for A Christmas Carol – which he self-published back in the day.
Becoming A Writer Reread #2
BECOMING A WRITER
Dorothea Brande
This is the second instalment in my reread of Dorothea Brande’s remarkable 1934 book, Becoming a Writer. You can find part one here. In part one Dorothea Brande described the four key difficulties that prevent a person from writing. In the second chapter, she takes a closer look at what functional, professional writers are (generally speaking) like as a group. Continue reading
A Bleak Tale of Existential Horror
OH THE PLACES YOU’LL GO
Dr Seuss ISBN 978-0-00-790680-2
I first encountered Oh The Places You’ll Go only recently – this year in fact – and it struck me at once as very distinctly different from all the other Dr Seuss that I was familiar with. What was Dr Seuss attempting with this slim volume? It cannot have been to provide education or encouragement for children, except perhaps for the preternaturally precocious savant. This is a dark, twisting story about ambition, creative endeavour, failure and depression. It is a tale of an adult life full of adult worries and it is frequently deeply cutting. Continue reading
The State Of The MRB #1
Because we’re setting up a new online (and eventually print) magazine here, I thought some people might be interested in some stats on how things are going. Our first post was on Feb 5 2014. We currently have seven reviewers and essayists contributing pieces and so far at least, we’ve managed to post on Monday, Wednesday and Friday as per the initial plan. The posts gradually increase to daily and eventually maybe even two or three posts on some or all days (very far down the track).
Becoming A Writer Reread #1
BECOMING A WRITER
Dorothea Brande
I first read Dorothea Brande’s Becoming a Writer after looking through a set of short writing advice pieces and noticing that at least three well-known authors advised it was essential reading, while no other book even got a mention. I remember one of those authors was Susanna Clarke, though I do not recall the other writer names. It doesn’t matter a great deal who they were – what matters is that they were right. I read Becoming a Writer and I felt immediately as if I were reading about all the secrets of writing that somehow I’d never noticed or heard mentioned. I’ve been intending to reread it for a couple years and this is as good a time as any. Continue reading
Becoming A Writer Reread
BECOMING A WRITER
Dorothea Brande (1934) ISBN 978-0-87477-164-0
Dorothea Brande’s Becoming a Writer is one of the earliest and one of the best books published on how to approach life as a writer. It is not so much a book on style or craft or writerly technique, but rather a book about finding your way around the problems of writing as a lifestyle. It is one of the few books that is regularly cited by published writers as something that all aspiring writers should go read.
In weekly instalments we will be rereading Becoming a Writer and summarising and discussing one chapter at a time. The first instalment will be along later this week in which we will reread In Introduction and Chapter One: The Four Difficulties.
Is Wartime A Genre Now?
I came to this topic listening to an interview with Markus Zusak. Now what follows is not a review of The Book Thief. I have not read The Book Thief, but I understand from others who have read it that it is a very good book and I don’t mean to cast any shadows on it. But, it was the spark of this essay and I think I need to start with honesty of thought.
What started me thinking about this was this: as Markus described his novel I found myself thinking: oh no, not another literary novel set against a world war out of desperation for tension. That thought made me immediately reflect. There has now been a very long trail of literary fiction set during one or the other of the world wars. I suppose I would trace it to The English Patient, and then draw a thread through Captain Corelli’s Mondolin, and onto more recent examples: Warhorse, Atonement, The Boy in the Striped Pajamas, The Book Thief and maybe even at a stretch Kavalier and Clay. I began to wonder, have literary stories set in the world wars transcended mere setting or the generalised area of historical fiction and become a genre unto themselves? Continue reading
Useful To Know: Free Hugo
You might not be aware that as a part of the process of the Hugo Awards, most magazines release the Hugo nominated short stories to the public for free to read. This is done in the hopes that this will increase the profile of said stories, and thus increase the chances of them being voted for in this public choice award.
In recent years this has extended to Escape Pod producing free audio-story versions of the Hugo nominated stories. You can find these by using the Hugo Awards category at Escape Pod like so or the Hugo Awards tag like so… The classification of Hugo stories hasn’t been totally consistent at Escape Pod over the years so you’ll need to check out both the ‘category’ and ‘tags’ pages to get all of them.
I seriously recommend you listening to the 2012 winner The Paper Menagerie by Ken Liu (MP3 here), and then browse through whatever other stories take your fancy.
The Evil Of Innocence And Nature
THE DRESDEN FILES BOOK 3 (GRAVE PERIL) (Audiobook Version)
Jim Butcher (Author), James Masters (Reading by)
At The Melbourne Review of Books we attempt to bring intelligent discussion to all forms of fiction, whether popular genre works or more obscure literary pieces. We want to bring something thoughtful to the discussion, not just a simple I liked this or I didn’t.
The Dresden Files series by Jim Butcher is a phenomenally successful urban fantasy series mixed up with mystery and gumshoe flavours. Unlike a lot of urban fantasy, it is less of a supernatural romance romp and more of a supernatural crime thriller, though the genre sort of demands some sex somewhere, so you will get that too. Continue reading
Some Words And Phrases That Do Not Exist But Probably Should
Just like the label says… Continue reading