Nobody’s perfect.
Even the modern day messiah, Barack Obama, has a character flaw – he smokes. So when you’re writing your breakout novel, screenplay or short story, make sure to give your character a few flaws that they can wrestle with and, hopefully, overcome through adversity.
Some of the best examples of this writing tactic tie subtle [...]
I volunteer at my kids’ school each week, helping teach karate classes in the after-school program. This usually involves me getting dressed up in a funny-looking pair of white pajamas and trying to get a roomful of toddlers (many with attention spans shorter than a fruit fly’s) to stop talking and pay attention to the [...]
Several links today from articles on writing and publishing that I’ve stumbled upon over the past few weeks:
Damon Runyon, who wrote “Guys & Dolls”, would sit in New York City restaurants and absorb the speech rhythms of the local gangsters and hoods. This great article examines his dual-layered narrative, and his key insight that “American [...]
A man will turn over half a library to make one book.
~Samuel Johnson
What’s the number one tool in the writer’s toolbox? You guessed it … his library.
Read, read, read. Read published books. Read literary criticism. Read book flaps and synopses. Read things you don’t like (often – it will break you out of a rut). [...]
Brainstorming is a tricky thing. In the advertising world, we try to bottle the process into a sort of scientific method … cramming a lot of smart, creative folks into a room and hoping for the best. But brainstorming for a client or a product is very different than brainstorming for a novel (or poem), [...]
“Narrative is like a freight train …”