Unlock the hidden structure of great stories. Deep dives into the craft of writing, story promises, and the art of keeping readers hooked.
A blog by Bill Johnson that explores principles of storytelling and articles about writing by other authors.
Elizabeth Lyon on Style and Voice
Story editor Elizabeth Lyon speaks about writing with voice and style on this YouTube video. Elizabeth is an accomplished editor who has helped many writers get their work published by traditional publishers. She has traveled around the U.S. teaching workshops for many years.
A Bridge from Facts to Fiction Article for writing by Stephen Gallup"> Story ideas come from real life. Even when we are inventing new worlds and new dimensions, the events we set forth in words follow recognizable logic and have their origin in lived experiences. Many writers feel drawn to subjects that are obviously autobiographical. As a memoirist, I think that’s fine. But over time that kind of writing can create a very deep groove. Here’s a suggestion for venturing out of it. If you feel that the character you are writing about is too familiar, stop and make a list of descriptive phrases about yourself. Then pick a feature and change it. Make that new trait central to your character. For example, I love music, but due to a few poor decisions along the way I cannot with any honesty call myself a musician. The phrase not musical showed up in my list. So I tried my hand at writing about a violinist. As sometimes happens, this character began to take char...
Buddha in the Garden, by Upaskia Yoly Buddha in the Garden is a charming and delightful book about how someone seeking to live by the tenets of the Buddha can manage a garden. The author moved from creating an organic garden in the lush Willamette Valley, with abundant rainfall and fertile earth, to a place in Arizona where limited rainfall and scarcity of nutrients made a garden a target for insects and animals. To protect a garden in such an arid climate, how is the concept of no killing resolved? Or can it be? By looking at each pest and guest with a calm mind, the author developed a deeper appreciation of how to avoid just being reactive. Right View leads her to Right Action. To replace a ‘Fix it Now!’ mentality with a calm ‘how does this action reflect the wheel of life?’ guides her to a deeper understanding that the order of life and death also leads to renewal and rebirth. Her individual chapters on d...
Notes on Emma Pattee's Novel Tilt In Emma Pattee's Tilt , a young, heavily pregnant mother is in an IKEA in Portland, Oregon searching for a baby bassinet when a major earthquake levels parts of Portland and all but one bridge over the Willamette river. At first trapped, she's rescued but loses her purse and phone in the rubble. Her rescue can also be viewed as a metaphor, a birth into a new life. Her first goal is to track down her husband at his job working at a cafe. When she reaches the cafe, she finds out he lied about working and instead is auditioning for a play, something he said he wouldn't do with the baby's birth immanent. To find him, now she must find a way to cross the Willamette river on the only standing bridge. The novel is organized around going from the present to the past, meeting her actor husband when she's had a first play produced and has a fantasy about becoming a famous play...
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