Tuesday, May 28, 2024

Episode 5: The Idiot Plot

It's up! emmaburns.org

Definitely go read the article on Wikipedia about the idiot plot, then come back and listen.

And if you've read everything on this blog, you're perfectly familiar with the novels and movie that infuriated me due to their use of the idiot plot. But I don't name them in the episode. Except Glass Onion. Because wow.

However, there's a fascinating connection between that and learned helplessness. Let's dive into that morass together!

Also I wrote 25,000 words of Summerlands in the past week or ten days, nobody knows which, and am definitely losing a little structural integrity in the thinkery because of it. I edit out those pauses but hoo boy they're getting longer and more frequent.

It's the.........................book.......................where we find..............and so on. It's like that. But I take them out. YOU'RE WELCOME. Oh my aching editing hand.

I realized an astonishing thing I missed in the draft so far while recording this. So thank you!

And my friend helped me figure out a fantastic way into the dad character that's actually going to make him work. After this recording, so I didn't know then, but I know now.

I have to go write until 3 a.m. then stagger around all next day again. Good times. Sacred cheese of life! 





Wednesday, May 22, 2024

Episode 4: The Last Flight of Dr. Ain

Episode four digs into open and closed mysteries while discussing James Tiptree Jr.'s short story "The Last Flight of Dr. Ain." It's available online at Lightspeed Magazine. Read it before you listen because you only get one first time with closed mysteries. 

I also worked through a big difficulty with the novel Summerlands and wrote a mountain of it afterwards, so that might be helpful for any writers out there. 

emmaburns.org

Oh and at the end I lose my mind entirely over the merch I've been making. It's so funny to me, this merch. I could wear a t-shirt of my own books. How ludicrous is that? But so can you! Why wouldn't you, after all?

Sacred cheese of life!




Episode 3: A Good Man is Hard to Find

This episode discusses Flannery O'Connor's story "A Good Man is Hard to Find" in the context of unlikable characters and how they function in fiction.

Sacred cheese of life!

emmaburns.org

 


 


Wednesday, May 1, 2024

Episode 2: A Cluster of Separate Sparks

Episode two is up! It's about Joan Aiken's novel A Cluster of Separate Sparks and the modern gothic as it pertains to this monstrous page one rewrite of Summerlands. Let's move it to Maine! Let's give it an actual plot! What a concept. 

Find it at emmaburns.org.

Listen and enjoy!