writing

On editing

How to make sense of your writing (and also maybe your past)

Episodes: Characters are actions, not dialogue

If you have a couple of minutes today and you're interested in the decline of the antihero drama, go and read Noel Murray's excellent piece on the "Dead Freight" episode of Breaking Bad, an episode I really like that, nonetheless, underlines some of my

Episodes: How to write a 6,000 word feature over five years

I posted an article today that I've been working on, off and on, for five years. I thought that number would provoke more contention, since it's a reported essay (in that I don't have a ton of quotes from outside sources), but people mostly

Episodes: Effect-cause

Toward the end of Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales, a movie I mostly hated, I realized that I often had no clue why characters were doing things. I could venture guesses. I could tell what the movie wanted me to think. But I could never quite

Episodes: How I make the top 18 shows list

Ever since I started doing my semi-regularly updated "18 best shows on TV" list at Vox (which I am in the process of updating as we speak!), I've been beset by a large number of questions, most of which have to do with "THAT'

Episodes: Your show in one word

Back when I was first starting out as a wannabe TV critic and/or TV writer, I read a blog post (that I've long since lost track of) that said something that really stuck with me. It said that since your TV show has to run for many,

Episodes: What am I looking at? How does it make me feel?

Earlier this week, I received a lengthy question from a reader for the mailbag, which, in essence, boiled down to "How do I write a movie review that goes beyond: I liked this part, and I didn't like that part?" At first, I figured I would

Episodes: How to interview

When I was first starting out in my journalism career – and even in my criticism career – having to do a big interview would keep me up nights. I remember that I once did a big interview for the Los Angeles Times with Ryan McPartlin, the guy who played Captain Awesome

Episodes: 1,200 words

One of the most fateful things to happen to me in my career happened because I misheard someone. When The A.V. Club extended the offer to me to join their freelance TV critic crew (which at that point was pretty small), I hopped on the phone with then-editor Keith

Episodes: How to write a freelance pitch

In the last seven or eight months, it's become very popular to pitch Vox Culture for freelance articles, despite the fact that we don't have the sort of budget or editorial team we'd love to have to commission every pitch we love, let alone

Episodes: By implication

My natural inclination as a critic is to try to hook whatever I'm watching up to some larger emotional world outside of the film. This has gotten me in trouble before, when I've either left out a couple of the steps in my thought process or

Episodes: Focus block

I have writer's block. This is not going to sound right to you if you look at, say, my publication history on Vox (as always, a fantastic website you should read all of the time). I'm still publishing one or two articles most days, even weekends,