Getting Notes – Ten Things to Consider
I got an email this morning from one of my students who just received a pile of notes on her work-in-progress and […]
The Imperative for Dramatic Conflict
A director told me once that if you put two actors together in a scene without directing them or staging the scene, […]
Why We Go on Retreat
For years, my students had been asking me when I was going to take them on a retreat. Frankly, I’d been […]
Banishing Redundancies
Redundancy is not only a sign of lazy writing; it can also pull us out of the story by interrupting the narrative […]
Writing Prose
“Prose is architecture, not interior design.” – Ernest Hemingway Our words are in service to our story. When we get too flashy with […]
The Courage to be Specific in Writing
Humans are full of paradoxes. We only love to the extent that we hate. We are constantly changing our minds, constantly renegotiating […]
Simplicity
Forward, he cried From the rear And the front ranks died. Pink Floyd (Us and Them) We can tell a whole […]
The Arc of a Scene
“I exhort you also to take part in the great combat, which is the combat of life, and greater than every other […]
Staying Connected to the Source
“To raise new questions, new possibilities, to regard old problems from a new angle, requires creative imagination.” – Albert Einstein The rewrite […]
Building Sentences
“You become a good writer just as you become a good joiner: by planing down your sentences.”– Anatole France There are no […]
Our Characters are Malleable
“Nothing changes more constantly than the past; for the past that influences our lives does not consist of what happened, but of […]
Narrative Drive
“The purpose of narrative is to present us with complexity and ambiguity.”— Scott Turow If you’re rewriting and a point in your […]
