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7mins
The screenwriting guru talks about what it was like to see himself portrayed by Brian Cox in the film “Adaptation.”
10mins
Film has hit a dead-end as a storytelling medium, says McKee, because it’s expensive and conservative—and what experimentation there is exists more to show off than to provide meaning.
3mins
Don’t try to put plot points on specific page numbers, says the screenwriting guru.
9mins
We spend more time than ever consuming stories. Do we need them more than we used to?
6mins
Dialogue and description are relatively minor parts of the creative process in television and film.
8mins
Advances in digital technology don’t change the way writers tell stories, but they do have an effect on the content of the stories that are told.
6mins
The biggest mistake that novice screenwriters make is trying to follow what’s trendy.
3mins
The main difference between screenwriting, playwriting and prose is the degree of conflict that interests the writer.
A conversation with the author and screenwriting guru.
2mins
What burdens does the author of “The Things They Carried” still bear?
3mins
Reflections on the younger generation, and on growing old.
3mins
The author and former veteran sees none of his generation’s “edgy,” questioning attitude in the modern military.
5mins
The rebellious anger of the Vietnam era hasn’t stopped war. In fact, “a slight stink of the hip” now surrounds our cultural memory of the event.
3mins
Writing about dead loved ones can’t bring them back—or even preserve their memories, really. But it’s something.
4mins
For Tim O’Brien, “true war stories” can be lies, or take place years before or after a war. Here he shares one that made him want to cry—and reminds him […]
4mins
Part of a writer’s job is to puncture our clichés about subjects like love and war with irony, edge, and ridicule.
5mins
How to convey the horror of war to someone who’s never witnessed it? It’s language, not the pain of remembering, that makes the task so hard.
5mins
Two decades after his masterpiece, the author reflects on war, fatherhood, and the passage of time that’s made him feel like “a stranger to the person who wrote that book.”
2mins
Writing never gets easier, but there are certain mistakes writers can learn to avoid.
45mins
A conversation with the National Book Award-winning writer.