There’s no such thing as a good book, only books that work for the reader.  But it seems like way too much attention has been paid to the General Reader, who I’ve never met, and neither did Plato. This series, To Catch a Reader, will try to drill down to the smallest microaudience that’s still coherent. I’m starting close to home, with “The Grunt”. These are the major consumers of war fiction, and the first in line for any story that features power armor. What motivates these readers? What do they like to see, and what can we learn from their core texts? I touch on Saving Private Ryan, Halo, Warhammer 40k, Aliens, Star Wars, and more.

What makes Dimension 20’s Fantasy High so incredibly bingeable?

You don’t want your protagonist to be the center of the universe. I look at Station Eleven to explain why.

How do you go about telling a story that nobody wants to hear?

Many critics are too cowardly to review a movie they haven’t seen. But when the red ball arrives, I must respond.

I spent over 100 hours of my finite time on this beautiful earth tagging the speaker for each and every line of dialogue in A Song of Ice and Fire. Just one piece of a shockingly in-depth look at this series.

How do writers use color in fiction? Who uses a lot of it? Who uses just a little?

A nuts and bolts look at the prose techniques of the always impressive M. John Harrison.

Heading down to the Golden Corral to figure out the appeal of “immersive fantasy”

A micro-study of a very clever dungeon master’s trick.

One of the subtler “oh shit” moments in Breaking Bad.