Elissa Bassist took an intro improv class and used what she learned to create some rules for writing funny fiction. (Thanks, Rachel)
What Improv Can Teach You about Writing Humor
The Animated ‘Aeneid’
Mark Robinson makes a case for the Aeneid in a vivid animated video that explains how the epic poem was published despite Virgil's wishes.
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Weather Permitting
What can you do with all the snow? Shelley Jackson is making stories out of it. The artist is writing a story entirely in snow. You can read the first 200 words of her tale on her Flickr. It begins, “To approach snow too closely is to forget what it is…”
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Translating After the Iron Curtain
The art of book translation becomes even more challenging when you translate a book that hasn’t been updated since the Cold War. At Asymptote, Jacek Dehnel discusses how much changed from Ariadna Demkowska’s 1962 translation of The Great Gatsby to his current work. “Demkowska was working under very different circumstances: behind the Iron Curtain and without access to Google. It was, therefore, more difficult for her to track down various details, such as those concerning well-known financiers or popular culture starlets of the 1920s.”
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Don’t Look at Me
If you go up to the Internet at a party and say hi, don’t feel offended if it scowls and turns away. The truth is, the Internet just has a thing for introverts.
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Dear Diary
Earlier this week, our own Thomas Beckwith reported on the Hermione/Ron scandal. Now, Mallory Ortberg has penned Ron Weasley’s secret diary at The Toast. “I don’t want to die. I’ve never even seen a movie. Seventeen years old and I’ve never seen a movie and I still don’t know what math is.” No wonder why J.K. Rowling wanted Hermione to end up with Harry.
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