You look at the draft, and the prose is tight. It’s got brisk pacing. The chapters end in the right places.

Yet readers struggle to stay invested in the story.

Many writers assume the problem is somewhere in the plot.

But often, the real culprit is missing consequences.

Every action in a story should have a proportional effect. A choice should create a new problem. Added responsibilities should come with victory. Mistakes should impose new obstacles. And all of these events should ripple outward, altering the circumstances surrounding the characters.

Without those ripples carrying them along, readers start bowing out.

Consider a simple example:

A hero ignores a warning and enters a forbidden ruin. Inside, he narrowly survives an encounter with a dangerous creature.

At first glance, that scene has it all: action, tension; probably even strong prose.

Yet if the encounter changes nothing, the sequence adds zero value. As a result, it’s disconnected from the rest of the story.

Oh, readers may enjoy the moment. But you can bet they won’t remember it.

Many authors unintentionally set their books up for this exact problem. Which can be hard to spot, because every scene works on its own. But for some reason, the whole is not greater than the sum of its part.

Read the full story on Substack.

That arrangement has been slowly changing. But now everyone is starting to notice.

Recent reporting and commentary have called attention to a growing trend. Productions that once would have been filmed in Los Angeles without question are increasingly heading elsewhere. Canada, the United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand, Georgia, and Eastern Europe now compete aggressively for movie projects.

In his recent video, Dave Cullen points to the obvious explanations.

Read the full post on Substack.

Every book is different, but if you can make one general statement about the publication process it is this:

It’s slow. And that deliberate pace serves an important purpose.

Recent reporting suggests many legacy publishers are abandoning that time-tested philosophy. More and more authors report truncated production schedules, rushed editing, reduced marketing support, and books hitting stores before they’re ready.

Oldpub set out to optimize itself for volume. And succeeded. At the cost of quality.

That devil’s bargain mirrors a pattern that keeps popping up throughout modern culture. The line must always go up. And every organization is convinced it has to produce more. Few stop to ask whether more is actually better.

Read the full post on Substack.

For most of the twentieth century, gatekeepers had a stranglehold on information. Television networks dictated entertainment and opinion. Newspapers could make or break presidents. Big publishers determined which authors got read, and which stayed invisible.

The internet changed those rules. Anyone could create a website, publish articles, and build an audience. The web decentralized information like previous generations could never have imagined.

Google played a major role in that paradigm shift. Their search engine directed people seeking information toward top-ranked sources. In the process, they sent traffic to online publishers.

Everyone benefited … at least for a while.

Recent developments in A.I.-powered searches indicate that the former arrangement may be changing. More and more users receive answers directly from Google instead of visiting the web sites that host the original info.

That change sounds minor, but its implications are enormous.

Read the full post on Substack.

Their prose is elegant. They have solid pacing. The plot works exactly as intended. Yet the book doesn’t connect with readers.

Cases like this, in which all the pieces are there and seem to fit together can be hard to diagnose. Because the problem isn’t at the technical level. Often, it arises from the characters’ decisions.

When many new writers edit scenes, they’re focused on outcomes. They know where the story needs to go, which events must occur to get there, and what information must be revealed.

Which is all well and good. But the risk is reducing characters to tools for achieving those goals.

A believable character makes decisions based on his own priorities. A flimsy character’s decisions are dictated by the author’s priorities.

You’d think avoiding that misstep would be easy, but the difference can be surprisingly subtle.

Read the full post on Substack.

The second a movie succeeds, executives immediately start searching for the secret ingredient. Once they identify it, or think they do, studios spend years trying to replicate the result. Audiences, meanwhile, are subjected to a whole era of cinema defined by Hollywood’s new pet production strategy.

The process sounds reasonable. Yet the results often date themselves quickly.

Consider the visual differences between Blade Runner and Blade Runner 2049. Or Tim Burton’s Batman and Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight.

Those films look almost nothing alike. From their color palettes to their cinematography to their visual effects, they barely resemble one another at all.

Yet audiences embraced all of them.

And what lesson did studio executives take from their success?

Was it to let proven auteur directors pursue their creative vision? No.

Or that audiences respond favorably to beautifully photographed movies? Not so much.

Read the full post on Substack.

So they replaced confusing objectives with quest markers. Minimaps were added to assist with navigation. Hidden objects got highlighted. In sum, designers steadily eliminated obstacles that might prevent players from reaching the next objective.

The intention was understandable. But the results were mixed blessings at best.

Many modern games are indeed smoother than their predecessors. Their controls feel more intuitive. The user interfaces convey information more clearly. And players do spend less time wandering aimlessly or getting trapped by obscure mechanics.

And yet, a valuable aspect of gaming fell by the wayside:

Discovery.

Think back to classic games from the 1980s, 1990s, and early aughts. How often did you get lost? How many times did you get stuck? How many controllers did you break by throwing them against the wall?

Read the full post on Substack.

Every era eventually creates myths that reflect its deepest anxieties.

Generation Z is no different. According to recent reporting in The Wall Street Journal, the explosive popularity of the Backrooms and other forms of Gen Z horror has attracted growing attention from Hollywood and cultural commentators. Many observers focus on the aesthetic elements; the endless yellow hallways and empty office buildings.

Granted, that imagery is memorable.

But the symbolism underlying the visuals is far more interesting.

At first glance, the Backrooms seem absurdly mundane. Previous generations feared haunted castles, ancient tombs, cursed forests, and abandoned asylums. Gen Z fears fluorescent lighting and office carpeting.

Their anxiety sounds ridiculous until one asks a simple question: “What exactly is a liminal space?”

The answer is, a place designed to take people somewhere else. An airport terminal, a hotel hallway, and a shopping mall corridor: None of these locations are destinations. They are the places between places that exist only to transition their temporary occupants elsewhere.

Now, imagine that the transition never ends.

Read the full post on Substack.

Debt Reckoning is now fully funded on Kickstarter. Stretch Goal 1 is funding now, so if you’d like to support the project and help make the book even better, you can check out the campaign here.

And yes, editors do catch typos, flag awkward sentences, remove repetition, and suggest stronger word choices.

Yet those technical fixes are not the primary purpose of editing.

The real purpose of editing isn’t about the author at all. It’s to preserve the reader’s immersion.

Many beginning writers approach revisions like a contractor starting a home renovation project. They comb through the manuscript searching for imperfections. Soon, they find themselves rewriting pages that already work perfectly well. Sure, the paragraph and sentence-level mechanics tighten up, yet the story becomes weaker.

If you learn nothing else about editing, internalize this fact: The goal is not prose that is perfect.

The goal is prose that grabs the reader’s attention and holds it until the end.

Read the full post on Substack.

Debt Reckoning is now fully funded on Kickstarter. Stretch Goal 1 is funding now, so if you’d like to support the project and help make the book even better, you can check out the campaign here.

Yet reality suggests a different dynamic at play: Fans follow stories.

That divide lies at the heart of gaming creator Aztecross’ recent predictions based on reports that Bungie is ending Destiny 2 while funneling resources into Marathon.

At first, the controversy seems to concern one studio’s plans for two different games. Beneath the surface, it exposes a misunderstanding that has permeated entertainment. Many companies no longer understand where audience loyalties lie.

From a corporate perspective, the logic seems straightforward. Bungie created Destiny. The same studio is creating Marathon. Therefore, some percentage of Destiny players should migrate to Marathon. The audience remains within the company’s portfolio, and the customer relationship survives.

Aztecross rejects that assumption entirely.

Read the full post on Substack.

Debt Reckoning is now fully funded on Kickstarter. Stretch Goal 1 is funding now, so if you’d like to support the project and help make the book even better, you can check out the campaign here.

His fingerprints show up everywhere. Video games borrow his monsters. Films imitate his atmosphere. Novelists continue expanding his mythology nearly a century after his death. The term “Lovecraftian” has become shorthand for an entire category of horror.

Yet despite his enormous influence, many readers misunderstand what makes his stories frightening.

Popular commentary often reduces Lovecraftian horror to fear of the unknown. That explanation sounds plausible at first glance. Unknown threats certainly populate his fiction, often hiding right behind ordinary reality.

The problem is that in the Lovecraft mythos, what people don’t know seldom hurts them.

Knowledge does.

Consider how Lovecraft’s stories typically unfold. A scholar discovers some forbidden text. He follows clues he should have ignored. The trail leads to information hidden for centuries.

Curiosity drives the plot, only for the final discovery to trigger catastrophe.

Again and again, Lovecraft’s protagonists begin in relative safety. Disaster strikes only after they learn what mankind was never supposed to know.

Read the full post on Substack.

University administrators responded by expanding their campuses. New buildings popped up like mushrooms after rain. Departments multiplied like rabbits. And all the while, tuition skyrocketed.

What all of those decisions had in common was the expectation of continued growth. That assumption is finally colliding with reality.

Recent reporting highlights a problem higher education can no longer ignore. The long-discussed enrollment cliff has arrived. Many colleges face shrinking applicant pools. Some have already closed; others are scrambling to merge before conditions deteriorate further.

Most coverage frames the looming end of the college bubble as a matter of demographics. Falling birth rates mean fewer students graduating from high school. That observation is correct. Yet demographics alone cannot explain the scale of the crisis unfolding across higher education.

Consider how colleges acted during the boom years. Rising enrollment kicked off an orgy of rapid expansion. The constant building projects jacked up tuition. Higher college prices forced students to borrow more. Increased borrowing encouraged even more expansion.

In short, growth was no longer an outcome of colleges’ success; it was a requirement to stay in business. But you can’t sustain continued growth with a shrinking consumer base.

Now that universities compete for a smaller pool of applicants, the economic checks and balances schools had been insulated from are swinging back with a vengeance.

Read the full post on Substack.

Debt Reckoning is now fully funded on Kickstarter. Stretch Goal 1 is funding now, so if you’d like to support the project and help make the book even better, you can check out the campaign here.

“They told me the middle feels slow.”

“They say they got bored but can’t explain why.”

Man a new author receives that kind of feedback … and instantly jumps to the wrong conclusion.

After reviewing enough manuscripts over the years, I have found that many of these books suffer from the same hidden problem.

The author forgot to give the story a direction.

Notice that I did not say plot. Those are related concepts, but they’re not identical.

A story may contain events. The characters can travel from place to place. We may get some action: Maybe villains attack; perhaps there are even explosions. Heck, whole kingdoms can rise and fall.

None of those elements, in and of themselves, give the story direction.

Read the full post on Substack.

Debt Reckoning is now fully funded on Kickstarter. Stretch Goal 1 is funding now, so if you’d like to support the project and help make the book even better, you can check out the campaign here.

Perhaps too simple …

To be sure, streaming made entertainment easier to access than ever before. Why drive to a theater when thousands of films are a few clicks away? Why plan your evening around a set show time when you can watch any number of movies on demand?

Studio executives looked at the rapid growth of Netflix and drew an obvious conclusion: The future belonged to convenience. Movie theaters were relics; the age of gathering in front of a giant screen with strangers was winding down.

Then, as it often does, the unexpected happened.

Generation Z started going back to the movies.

Everyone knew that younger audiences had little interest in theaters. After all, Zoomers grew up surrounded by streaming platforms. They spend more time online than any previous generation. If anyone should have embraced the supremacy of digital entertainment, it was them.

Yet some of the biggest theatrical success stories of the past year have depended heavily on younger moviegoers. And, more impressively, movie makers.

Michael packed theaters even as the King of Pop reconquered Spotify.

Backrooms made the leap from cult YouTube hit to nationwide sensation.

Obsession resurrected the midlist horror flick.

And significantly, each film attracted viewers who could easily have stayed home.

Read the full post on Substack.

Debt Reckoning is now fully funded on Kickstarter. Stretch Goal 1 is funding now, so if you’d like to support the project and help make the book even better, you can check out the campaign here.

“Original stories are too risky,” they said. “Moviegoers crave brands they already recognize.”

That assumption justified every studio decision from endless superhero sequels to the resurrection of franchises old enough to collect Social Security.

Studios poured hundreds of millions into Brand X because conventional wisdom held that recognizable IP was the only reliable way to fill seats. Every hit reinforced the belief that audiences would only support what they already knew. Yet every disappointing first weekend prompted calls for even greater caution.

Then a 20-year-old YouTuber walked into theaters and embarrassed the entire industry.

Against all expectations, Backrooms and Obsession, two comparatively modest horror films, recently overtook the latest Star Wars movie at the box office.

Read the full post on Substack.

Debt Reckoning is now fully funded on Kickstarter. Stretch Goal 1 is funding now, so if you’d like to support the project and help make the book even better, you can check out the campaign here.

Some were discreetly swept under the rug. Others died after years of rumors, internal demos, and public teasing.

For years, executives treated remakes like a guaranteed license to print money. Why gamble on a new property when nostalgia already came with a built-in audience? Why risk creating another Forspoken when a remastered Final Fantasy, Metal Gear, or Resident Evil could coast on brand recognition alone?

Now the chickens are coming home to roost, and panic is setting in.

Multiple AAA game publishers have announced cancellations of high-profile remakes. What that massive walk-back may tell us is that the industry just figured out nostalgia is a finite resource.

Audiences will gladly revisit a beloved classic once in a while. But no entertainment outfit can survive by endlessly strip-mining its own past. Eventually, consumers start to notice they are paying inflated prices for prettier but shallower versions of games they already bought twenty years ago.

That realization is a textbook case of too little, too late. Development costs have skyrocketed into the stratosphere. Teams now number in the hundreds, yet their production cycles span half a decade. With marketing budgets to rival Hollywood films, a single flop can wipe out a whole studio division.

Those conditions explain why so many publishers became obsessed with remakes in the first place. A remake comes with recognizable characters, proven gameplay foundations, and decades of free advertising. Plus, when investors hear the title of a famous game from 1998, they assume success is inevitable.

Unfortunately for them, audiences have gone off script.

Read the full post on Substack.

The Kickstarter campaign for Debt Reckoning has passed the 80% funding mark. Exciting stretch goals are on the horizon, so if you’d like to support the project and help push it across the finish line, you can check out the campaign here.

Men without father figures slide toward chaos. Fatherless boys fall prey to false prophets. And whole societies robbed of fathers lose the ability to distinguish authority from domination, discipline from cruelty, or masculinity from playacting.

Those themes recur so often because the wound they describe has become one of the defining realities of the modern West.

A recent video essay by author Hilary Layne explored these themes through two remarkable novels: Fight Club and The Sailor Who Fell from Grace with the Sea.

Read the full post on Substack.

The Kickstarter campaign for Debt Reckoning has passed the 80% funding mark. Exciting stretch goals are on the horizon, so if you’d like to support the project and help push it across the finish line, you can check out the campaign here.

The not-so-subtle implication was that ownership itself had become obsolete. Consumers would supposedly embrace on-demand access to infinite content for one low monthly fee.

It turns out that physical ownership isn’t quite dead after all.

A recent report shows that large numbers of Gen Z viewers now subscribe to streaming services only long enough to binge specific shows before canceling them. More and more younger viewers rotate between services instead of maintaining long-term subscriptions.

Meanwhile, even Netflix has begun cautiously returning to physical media releases with deluxe collector’s editions and high-end Blu-ray sets.

Those developments are not isolated incidents. Taken together, they reveal mounting dissatisfaction with the disposable entertainment model Silicon Valley spent years imposing on consumers.

Ironically, the generation least attached to physical media may become the force that revives it.

Read the full post on Substack.

The Kickstarter campaign for Debt Reckoning has passed the 75% funding mark. Exciting stretch goals are on the horizon, so if you’d like to support the project and help push it across the finish line, you can check out the campaign here.

For most of the late twentieth century, higher education played a straightforward role in American life. Degrees were expensive, but manageable. They distinguished applicants in the labor market, so for many people, college did provide a path to the middle class.

Then the second-order effects set in.

Instead of providing competitive advantages, a college degree mutated into a baseline credential. Jobs that once took basic competence began requiring degrees. Universities expanded aggressively, driven by administrative bloat fed in turn by free government money. And tuition rose year after year; far beyond inflation.

Worse, those federally backed loans insulated the system from the normal economic pressures that would otherwise have reined in costs.

But perhaps the most important change was cultural …

Continue reading the post on Substack

The Kickstarter campaign for Debt Reckoningis currently live and is nearing the 3/4 funding mark. This is also the final day to claim the limited Memorial Day Special, which includes the Kickstarter-exclusive eBook, paperback, hardcover, signed Collector’s Bookmark, acknowledgment credit, and a personalized signed inscription label.

More than half of these limited bundles have already been claimed. So if you’d like to support the project and help push it across the finish line, you can check out the campaign here.

But roadblocks kept popping up along the way.

• Tuition kept rising faster than inflation

• student aid expanded year after year, yet so did tuition

• degrees that once opened doors became increasingly shaky investments.

Meanwhile, younger generations began delaying major life milestones, or missing them altogether.

A lot of commentary about this subject devolves into partisan finger-pointing. But the deeper issue is incentives. Once colleges knew the federal lending system would keep expanding access to unlimited student debt, the normal price pressures that restrain costs evaporated. Universities added layers of administration, started amenities arms races, and inflated tuition far beyond what many graduates could realistically repay.

At the same time, the labor market increasingly split into two economies: one dominated by credential inflation and financed white-collar career paths, and another desperate for skilled labor that fewer young Americans were encouraged to pursue.

The result: We now have shortages in trades, absurd credential requirements for entry-level jobs, and millions of borrowers wrestling with repayment systems that grow more complicated by the year.

That larger economic story is what led me to write my new nonfiction book Debt Reckoning.

The Kickstarter campaign for the book is now live. This project examines …

1. how the student loan system evolved

2. why college costs continue to rise

3. how perverse incentives distorted higher education

4. what borrowers can do to navigate the often complex repayment, consolidation, and forgiveness options currently available

5. and what reforms could help prevent future generations from inheriting the same burdens.

The launch also includes a limited Special Reward available only through Memorial Day weekend, including the Kickstarter-exclusive eBook, paperback, hardcover, signed Collector’s Bookmark, acknowledgment credit, and a personalized signed inscription label from me.

If the project sounds interesting to you, you can check it out here.