We spend more time than ever consuming stories. Do we need them more than we used to?

Dialogue and description are relatively minor parts of the creative process in television and film.

Advances in digital technology don’t change the way writers tell stories, but they do have an effect on the content of the stories that are told.

The biggest mistake that novice screenwriters make is trying to follow what’s trendy.

The main difference between screenwriting, playwriting and prose is the degree of conflict that interests the writer.

A conversation with the author and screenwriting guru.

What burdens does the author of “The Things They Carried” still bear?

Reflections on the younger generation, and on growing old.

The author and former veteran sees none of his generation’s “edgy,” questioning attitude in the modern military.

The rebellious anger of the Vietnam era hasn’t stopped war. In fact, “a slight stink of the hip” now surrounds our cultural memory of the event.

Writing about dead loved ones can’t bring them back—or even preserve their memories, really. But it’s something.

For Tim O’Brien, “true war stories” can be lies, or take place years before or after a war. Here he shares one that made him want to cry—and reminds him […]

Part of a writer’s job is to puncture our clichés about subjects like love and war with irony, edge, and ridicule.

How to convey the horror of war to someone who’s never witnessed it? It’s language, not the pain of remembering, that makes the task so hard.

Two decades after his masterpiece, the author reflects on war, fatherhood, and the passage of time that’s made him feel like “a stranger to the person who wrote that book.”

Writing never gets easier, but there are certain mistakes writers can learn to avoid.

A conversation with the National Book Award-winning writer.

Siri Hustvedt recommends an “extraordinary, unusual little book.”

The novelist on having a fellow author (Paul Auster) as a spouse, and the state of mind that’s essential to good writing.

The “crossing of senses,” in perception and memory, was once considered too strange to study. Now scientists suspect it’s universal, at least in infancy.

Studying a humiliating memory from her own childhood convinced the author that we “place” what we remember, and vice versa.

The author once had a weird, wonderful vision induced by a migraine, but believes other hallucinations are common variations of pathologies.

How the emerging science of neuropsychoanalysis is reviving Sigmund Freud’s old project: analyzing the subjective experience of the individual mind.

The bizarre seizure that struck the author at her father’s memorial service launched her on an exploration of neurology, psychology, and the ancient study of buried memory.

A conversation with the novelist and author of “The Shaking Woman.”

Arthur Lerner-Lam has been through quakes, but never big ones. He wonders whether the “visceral feel” of a major shakeup should be a required part of every seismologist’s training.

No, earthquakes aren’t caused by global warming. But popular confusion about them provides a rare opportunity for science to conduct meaningful conversations with the public.

Both countries were struck by massive earthquakes, yet the scale of tragedy in Haiti was far worse. What happened in each case, and what lessons can be learned from the […]

For both citizens and government, diligent preparations can make the difference between “ho-hum” and disaster.

The chances of “The Big One” hitting California in the next few decades is near 100%. The only questions are—how big, and when?