rice + beans

Inspiration Vs. Plagiarism: Where To Draw The Line?

While scrolling my Twitter timeline this weekend, I found myself revisited by a question I asked myself when I first fell in love with a modern poet’s words at a reading: where does inspiration end and plagiarism begin?

Art has a natural evolution, as it inspires other art. And storytelling is no different — almost all stories can fit into a handful of core ideas that have been shuffled around,…

Read Epigraph Press, Issue 1: FAZED

Read Epigraph Press, Issue 1: FAZED on Issuu

CONTRIBUTORS Alicia Alcantara-Narrea | Beth Bowser | Casey Reinhardt | Chris Bullard | Edward Varga | Erica Wahlgren | Gergely Bukovinszki | Jeronimo Batista Rosa Chaveiro | Julian/Sara Mithra | Kate Bernadette Benedict | SaraEve | Vicente Muñoz | Yasuaki Okamoto

Download FAZED here

An Interview with T.R. North: On Poetry, The Writing Process, & Her New Feminist Fairy Tale Chapbook from Sword & Kettle Press, “Of Witches & Wolves”

I’m happy to introduce you to our first interviewee, T.R. North! Her new chapbook, “Of Witches & Wolves,” can be found on Sword & Kettle’s Etsy page. For a more in-depth look into her chapbook, please visit Sword & Kettle’s Bookshelf. T.R. North can be found on Twitter (@northonthegulf), and on her blog. Let’s get some insight into her writing process and what went into “Of Witches & Wolves!”

 Ho…

A Quick Look at 23 Different Types of Poetry

No matter what your thoughts on “Instapoetry” are, it seems to have affected the way that society views poetry. Poetry is more than just rhyming words: it’s an expression of feelings and ideas crafted together using style and rhythm. But how many different types of poetry styles are there? Let’s take a look at a few of the different kinds.

Acrostic

Can be written using one word, name, or a…

10 Ways to Create a Pen Name that Works for You

There’s a lot of reasons authors choose to publish under a pseudonym: it helps them feel free to experiment, keeps their writing secret from people they know, allows them to write in different genres, makes them easier to find in search results, and helps to create a new persona that reflects their writing personality.

Let’s take a look at 10 different things to consider when creating a pen name:

Call for Submissions: “Fazed”

EPIGRAPH PRESS is currently hosting an open call for submissions for our first issue, “Fazed.”

Submissions close Monday, October 1st at midnight (PST) with a projected release date in October 2018.

Faze: (v.) disturb or disconcert (someone).

What fazes you? We’re looking your darkest and most eclectic imagery, whether it’s Sharp Objects-esque or related to our current political state, in the…

5 Ways to Increase your Story’s Tension

Does your story need that extra oomph? Lacking anticipation?

Here’s 5 quick suggestions, following up to one of our first posts, 6 Ways to Drive Your Story Through Conflict, that will help move your story along.

Don’t give your characters what they want It’d be too easy if they got everything they wanted! There should be some struggle. Another suggestion: give them what they want but make it have…

What’s a chapbook?

Find yourself scrolling through your friends’ social media feeds and seeing that one of your friends just published a chapbook? Getting recommendations to write your own chapbook? What is a chapbook?

A chapbook, in short, is a small collection of poetry that’s under 40 pages. It usually centers on a specific theme. Its format can be like a pamphlet or magazine, or saddle-stitched. Sometimes they…

Here’s 5 Quick Ways to Improve as A Writer

In yesterday’s post, Top 10 Commandments for Writers, we went over 10 of the top writing rules that should be in every writer’s notebook. Today, we’re looking at 5 quick fixes that will dramatically change your writing.

    Write Daily

Being a better writer takes practice. Even if it’s just a few paragraphs, the only way to get better as a writer is to actually write. Keep practicing.

 Try A…

Top 10 Commandments for Writers

Words aren’t easy. They may not flow. They may suck. There may be too many. Writers write: it’s in the very definition. Let’s come up with a set of rules to make it easier to generate the words in your stories:

You shall not listen to your inner critic.

You shall write first, edit later.

Remember to keep learning, you shall join a writer’s group, take a class, or attend a conference.

You shall…

How to Write a Well-Rounded Asexual Character

Happy Monday! It’s now the second week of Camp NaNoWriMo. How have your projects been coming along? Since our San Diego Pride Parade is less than a week away and in honor of our LGBT+ friends and family, I thought we should cover one of the “+’s” that are often overlooked in literature. Continuing this Camp series theme of character tips (see our first on female villains and second on clichéd…

4 Clichéd Characters You Need to Stop Writing & How to Fix Them

Continuing this week’s trend of tips for Camp NaNoWriMo, we’re exploring characters and how to craft them. In our last post, 9 Tips to Help You Develop a Believable Female Villain, we looked at how to create the perfect female villain. Today we’re exploring protagonists and supporting character tropes that have become a little stale:

The Brooding/Mysterious Hunk

He’s interesting, he’s troubled,…

9 Tips to Help You Develop a Believable Female Villain

Happy July, or happy #CampNaNoWriMo! We’re kicking off the month by exploring different ways to improve your writing.

Oftentimes, plausible female villains are overshadowed by their male counterparts. Here are 9 ways to improve your story and make your characters believably bad to the bone:

As always, read other stories about villains, male or female, to pick up on how others have successfully…

You Don’t Have to be Sad to Make Good Art: Exploring Creativity and Depression

Van Gogh was so sad he ate yellow paint to feel happiness; Woolf’s depression led her to walk into the ocean; Hemingway was at the forefront of the Lost Generation: the relationship between depression and creativity is fairly well known, and it’s often romanticized as being the key to creating good art.

It’s been said before that individuals with a more creative personality are more likely to be…

How to Collaborate: Tips from The Daily Show

Earlier this week, I was listening to the TED original podcast WorkLife with Adam Grant where he interviewed the writers from The Daily Show on how they come up with material. The writers seem to have aced the art of collaborating (yes, it is an art). But how?

“Burstiness” is what they call it. Yes, like bursts, but the multiple of bursts. They pitch their ideas to each other in the room and…

Likes, follower count, and book sales aside: how should we define and measure our success?

We live in a bit of a weird time: we want to produce good art but we’ve also got more eyes on our work than our predecessors so we’re constantly receiving more feedback than they ever probably did. Likes, follower count, and book sales aside: how should we define and measure our success? Breaking down the components of success make it seem simple. Too simple, since there’s only two parts. But the…

This morning I woke up thinking it was an hour earlier than it actually was. No, it was not daylight savings time. It was me, not realizing I had snoozed my alarm three times.

This morning I woke up thinking it was an hour earlier than it actually was. No, it was not daylight savings time. It was me, not realizing I had snoozed my alarm three times. But I had been ready to wake up: to enjoy the first sip of my 2x caffeine k cup with a splash of soy milk; to reveal in the quiet of the early morning; to be in my one hour of uninterrupted writing time. But it was 6 am and…