Drive thy business or it will drive thee. – Benjamin Franklin
At this point in the story, the character looks at himself. He takes stock of where he is in the conflict and––depending on the type of story––has either of two basic thoughts. In a character-driven s...
The Super Structure Principle may be stated as follows: The power of your story is directly proportional to the readers’ experience of it, and the readers’ experience is directly proportional to the s...
Dwight Swain, the great writing teacher, once said that the secret of excitement is to go deeper into your characters. Create more backstory, more secrets, more complexity, and you'll get excited agai...
You must want it enough. Enough to take all the rejections, enough to pay the price of disappointment and discouragement while you are learning. Like any other artist you must learn your craft—then yo...
I was in the house alone. That's usually the case because I'm writing and my wife is out in the real world doing something of great value and being with actual people. People who are not tied down to...
While there is some disagreement over the official length of a short story, a good rule of thumb is that it is between 1k and 7k words. Less than that and you get into the area of flash fiction. More...
When the last dime is gone, I'll sit on the curb with a pencil and a ten-cent notebook, and start the whole thing all over again. – Preston Sturges
Don’t you love that? One of the greatest scientific innovations of all time just came to Townes as he was sitting on a bench in a park. And then he starts scratching it out on paper.
To be a writer, you have to write. Not like it's your job, and not like it's your love. You have to write like it's your holy chore, you have to write like you are compelled from above and within and...
Transformation is about change, and change needs to be proven. People can talk a good game. Someone can say he's sorry for stealing and wants to go straight. But until the thief returns the goods, we...
What I found was a moment where the main character has to figuratively look at himself, as in the mirror. He is confronted with a disturbing truth: change or die.
Theme. It’s something a lot of writers don’t like to think about. It brings up painful memories of high school English class (Write a 1,000 word essay on the theme of The Great Gatsby, and be sure to...
The semi-colon is a burp, a hiccup. It's a drunk staggering out of the saloon at 2 a.m., grabbing your lapels on the way and asking you to listen to one more story.
The great spy novelist John Le Carré suggested this axiom: The cat sat on the mat is not the beginning of a story. The cat sat on the dog's mat, is.
The best way to predict the future is to invent it. – Alan Kay
The Care Package is a relationship the Lead has with someone else, in which he shows his concern, through word or deed, for that character's well being.
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