Two Video Tutorials on Nailing Your Concept

Some of us are visual learners.  This is for you. Some of us take more than a few passes at it before it sinks in.  This is for you, as well. I’m talking about CONCEPT within a story.  What it is.  What is isn’t.  How and why concept and premise are different things entirely, and […]

What You May be Missing about “50 Shades of Grey”

It’s all about the “story physics.”  In this case, 100 million examples of how and why story physics are the most important consideration in the crafting of a story. Maybe it is.  But that’s not the right question… at least here. Did you see the film Unbroken, which documents some of the most heinous human […]

How to Create a Story Premise that Works

A case study illustrating a premise that tried, but comes up short. With an extensive tutorial on why, and how to avoid this trap.   When asked how one moves from knowledge to execution… more accurately, the ability to apply storytelling principles to the writing of a draft… I always say this: look for and […]

The Quintessential Paradoxical Pantser Conundrum

Pantser: someone who creates using the seat of their pants, rather than developing a plan beforehand.   Sometimes the way we choose to do things is, pure and simple, fun.  Sometimes fun trumps everything else.  For some, we choose easy rather than what doesn’t come naturally or is perceived as complex.  So choose wisely… not […]

Novelists: Two Empowering Little Mind-Models That Just Might Change Everything For You

Some things in life are not measurable. Like, which tastes better, a fresh strawberry or a juicy fat beet.  The answer doesn’t matter at all if the stakes are limited to you staring into your refrigerator, and while we can guess there is a vast majority leaning one way over the other in this preferential […]

The New World of Publishing

What’s changed… what hasn’t.   Allow me to narrow the lens of that title to focus on what writers of fiction — not David Baldacci or Dan Brown, not Nora Roberts or Jodi Picoult… rather, writers like you and me and everything above, below and in between, published and self–published, bestselling authors and widely published […]