BECAUSE I apparently don’t have enough to do and can’t stop myself from writing about writing, I’ll be launching a whole new newsletter/essay series over at Substack on June 15, 2021: Writing Without Rules: Deep Dives.
Substack is a writing service where you can either read pieces right there on the site, or sign up for a weekly newsletter that appears via Internet Magic in your mailbox. While some folks monetize these newsletters, Deep Dives will be 100% free, unless you count the time spent reading my ravings and the possible reputational damage of being identified as someone who takes Jeff Somers seriously, which will be significant.
What will I be writing about over at Writing Without Rules: Deep Dives? Good question! The answer is right there on the tin: Whereas in most of my other writing about, er, writing I focus in on craft and technical stuff, over at Deep Dives I’ll be digging into the reasons why stories work. Most of what makes a story work or not work is kind of opaque and subterranean; you can get hung up on how to plot out a story or how to make characters sound like individual people on the page, but often what really determines the success or failure of a story has less to do with technical aspects like that and more to do with a certain je ne sais quoi. That je ne sais quoi is what we’ll be digging into, using pop culture — TV shows, movies, video games — as our examples.
Hopefully, it’ll be fun and interesting, especially to anyone who aspires to be a writer of fictions, or anyone who just likes thinking way too hard about TV shows and the like. And I promise to keep the pantsless jokes and whiskey references to a minimum.
So, hope to see you on June 15th. Until then, please go on over and sign up, share the link, and tell all your friends about this hot new piece of Somers Action. Wait, that came out wrong. Which button is erase