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The Salon’s Laura Miller gives a word to the to wannabe writers – summarising the rules for writing fiction and advice from the point of view of a consumer rather than a fellow scribe.

Many an aspiring screenwriter has pored over Robert McKee’s book “Story: Substance, Structure, Style and The Principles of Screenwriting,” trying to suss out the creative secrets that will result in […]

A tiny germ of an idea leads to research, which leads to further ideas and then more research. Eventually the writer has hundreds of pages of notes to work from.

Meanwhile, let another Rolling Stone reporter take your attention, for a different if no less compelling reason: a meditation on a writer we miss, David Foster Wallace. In the latest […]

Part of a writer’s job is to puncture our clichés about subjects like love and war with irony, edge, and ridicule.

Nathaniel Rich writes that Ray Bradbury’s best stories are “have a strange familiarity about them. They’re like long-forgotten acquaintances—you know you’ve met them somewhere before.”

Audrey Hepburn’s Holly Golightly has served as a style icon for decades, but the subtle complexities of Truman Capote’s heroine are less discussed. Today’s Times review of Sam Wasson’s new […]

President Theodore Roosevelt vetoed the idea. 

Time to get the answers to your questions for Sally Kuhn Sennert of the Global Volcanism Program.

Singer/songwriter Jonathan Coulton is so famous that you might never have heard of him. That’s because he’s “internet famous” (i.e. he has a passionate fan base that he’s built up […]

A conversation with the writer, artist, and Yale computer scientist.

An e-mail exchange between a Washington and Jerusalem-based reporter takes stock of the changing relationship between the U.S. and Israel.

A conversation with the actor, writer, producer, and journalist.

Author Paul Theroux says that e-books seem “magical” to him, but that something is lost when we give up the “physicality” of a book.

I’m no TV critic. My best TV watching days were over twenty years ago. But a slot on my blog here might as well be reserved for my weekly thoughts […]

Held in over 30 countries, the World Wide Views on Global Warming initiative represents the state-of-the-art in new approaches to public engagement, the subject of several recent reports and meetings. […]

Up to 8,000 people each year go hunting for a legendary gold mine, guided by cryptic maps like these.

Following on the somewhat silly Times cover piece on how distracted we all are, itself in opposition to Steven Pinker’s brilliant Times Op-Ed today, Walter Kirn’s contribution to The Atlantic’s […]

What the writer taught his son has shaped his life and helped him cope with his mother’s cancer.

Jakub Grygiel gives eleven reasons why the study of classical history, and writers like Herodotus and Thucydides, are still vital to a modern education.

Mark Twain was a great American novelist, but Nathanial Rich notes that in his own lifetime—which ended exactly a hundred years ago today—he was read more widely as a travel writer.

I thought I had seen all there was to be seen about Shirley Sherrod, until I can across an article titled Sherrod Story False in American Spectator by Jeffrey Lord, […]

David Remnick appeared on Meet the Press yesterdayto discuss his book on Obama. Among other things, he noted how careful the President is in understanding the need for nuance when […]

Urban studies theorist Richard Florida came by the Big Think offices recently to talk about what he’s coined “The Great Reset”—the effects of the economic crisis on our country, and […]

Today, we’re doing something a bit different. Instead of focusing on a specific design-for-good product or idea, let’s focus on why it’s important to talk about these products and ideas […]

The main difference between screenwriting, playwriting and prose is the degree of conflict that interests the writer.

A conversation with the National Book Award-winning writer.

“The laughter is unlike most settings you’ll find.The level of intensity, the adrenaline, the stakes are incredible.I mean, it is addictive.” As an actor and playwright, you might think John […]

This past weekend, a diversity of scholars and experts were called to Oregon for what might be described as a “three cultures summit” on climate change. The two-day deliberation included […]

Writing never gets easier, but there are certain mistakes writers can learn to avoid.