“Storytelling is an indispensable human preoccupation, as important to us all—almost—as breathing. From the mythical campfire tale to its explosion in the post-television age, it dominates our lives. It behooves us then to try and understand it.” On the inherent sameness of stories with John Yorke from The Atlantic.
You Know the Story
What Improv Can Teach You about Writing Humor
Elissa Bassist took an intro improv class and used what she learned to create some rules for writing funny fiction. (Thanks, Rachel)
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A Bookish Father’s Day
Looking for the perfect book for Father’s Day, but didn’t find quite what you were looking for in our list? Lit Hub has some supplemental titles you might be interested in.
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Tir gan teanga, tir gan anam
If you missed the worldwide celebration of Irish literary greats on St. Patrick’s Day, you can make up for it with these podcasts of classic Irish writers at The Guardian.
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Show Up, Don’t Show Up
“You’ll engage with your advisor in a free-form dialogue about essential skills such as plotting your next career, pacing your financial ruin, structuring TV binge-watching during optimal writing hours, and characterizing all of this as ‘learning how to fail.'” Hey, this new low-competency MFA from the fictitious Half Mast College sounds pretty great. Here’s our own Hannah Gersen on why she has foregone the MFA route entirely.
Words of the Year Watch, Con’t
Two more words of the year as 2016 comes to a close: Merriam-Webster has chosen “surreal” while The Guardian, in an act of timeliness, nominates “unpresidented.”
Quite the Crossover Artist
Before Dr. Seuss penned the Lorax who spoke for the trees, he drew ads for Standard Oil, General Electric, and a host of other large corporations who spoke for a considerably different constituency. This great collection of advertising artwork from Theodore Seuss Geisel courtesy of the Mandeville Special Collections Library at the University of California, San Diego.
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