While Cathy Caruth’s 1990s model was foundational for bringing trauma into literary criticism, it faced heavy pushback starting in the late 1990s and 2000s. Critics from psychology, history, and postcolonial studies argued that her definition of trauma was too narrow, politically limited, and overly reliant on Western, white, and middle-class frameworks. The primary criticisms and […]
In The Art of Story as Worldbuilding, author Nathan Nance addresses the common pitfall where writers get so trapped in researching and documenting their fictional universes that they forget to write an actual story. He argues that worldbuilding should never exist in isolation; instead, it must be filtered entirely through character perspective and plot necessity. […]
Baker is entirely correct about the financial reality of modern publishing and Hollywood. Tightly wound, single-volume stories with absolute finality are difficult to monetize over a decade. Media corporations desperately want open-ended intellectual property that supports merchandise, spin-offs, and theme parks. Instead of dismissing heavy worldbuilding as just “bad writing,” Baker gives it due credit. […]
