If you could be invisible, what would you do? The chances are that it will have something to do with power, wealth or sex. Perhaps all three, given the opportunity.
If that’s so, there is no need to feel guilty. Or rather, it is doubtless good for the soul to experience a little contrition, but your response is not perverse or aberrant. We have it on Plato’s authority that this is all perfectly normal. In The Republic
he (or rather, his narrator Glaucon) explains that invisibility is not a technical problem but a moral one.
~PHILIP BALL, author of Invisible: The Dangerous Allure of the Unseen
he (or rather, his narrator Glaucon) explains that invisibility is not a technical problem but a moral one.
WRITING & SCREENWRITING
- Why endings (particularly for TV shows) are so goddamn hard, Terrible Minds | Tweet
Another finale, come and gone. This one left us with great expectation, but did it fulfill us? Did it complete its journey around the narrative sun? Did it conclude the tale of its troubled protagonist? Did it draw the character’s interior life out and connect it to the exterior? Did it show the fall from grace we were expecting?
→Novel Endings (Essential Writing Skills Series Book 13)
- The 10 keys to writing killer fight scenes, Writer Unboxed | Tweet
To write a proper fight scene, you need to be in a fightin’ frame of mind.
→Writing Fight Scenes (Writer’s Craft)
- The writer’s formula to a captivating setting, The Write Practice | Tweet
The first piece of the formula for a captivating setting is to choose a place that is familiar.
→Writing Active Setting: The Complete How-to Guide with Bonus Section on Hooks Box Set
- The spine of the screenplay, Script Mag | Tweet
The spine in a human’s body is what holds the body’s framework together. In a screenplay, the spine holds the script together. Without a strong spine, the body and the screenplay collapse.
→Screenplay: The Foundations of Screenwriting
SELF-PUBLISHING
As in any other creative business relationship, the briefing process is the most important part of the collaboration. A good brief will save you and your designer both time and money.
- All your editing questions answered with Jen Blood, The Creative Penn | Tweet
In my opinion, one of the best investments to help your book become the best it can be is professional editing. In today’s show, we go through all kinds of questions that authors ask about editing.
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FREEDOM
- Freedom regained, Scientia Salon | Tweet
Given what we believe about the brain’s role in consciousness, wouldn’t it be more surprising if nothing was going on in your brain before you made a decision?
→Freedom Regained: The Possibility of Free Will
PSYCHOLOGY
- Does wearing red really make you dominant, charismatic and sexy?, The Guardian | Tweet
A new study claims it does. Stuart Heritage puts the theory to the test in his local town centre.
SCIENCE
- The science of craving, More Intelligent Life | Tweet
THE REWARD SYSTEM exists to ensure we seek out what we need. If having sex, eating nutritious food or being smiled at brings us pleasure, we will strive to obtain more of these stimuli and go on to procreate, grow bigger and find strength in numbers.
→Craving: Why We Can’t Seem to Get Enough
HEALTH
- Oliver Sacks knows what it really means to live, The Atlantic | Tweet
The neurologist’s new memoir, On the Move, is a glorious celebration of the fullness of human experiences.
BOOKS
- Book Review: The Invisible, Scientific American | Tweet
Humans have always imagined the invisible—whether spirits that are summoned or appeased, intangible ether suffusing the universe, or x-rays, magnetic forces and microbes that can be put to work. Science writer Ball takes readers through history to show how myths and legends of the invisible, along with the science of each time period, have influenced our quest to understand what we cannot see.
→Invisible: The Dangerous Allure of the Unseen