Six Core Storytelling Competencies: Good… Better… Best.
Ask anyone who writes fiction how many issues an author needs to think about, how much stuff there is to know and execute, and you may get an answer that amounts to dozens, even hundreds of things. That’s pretty accurate, actually. Few who have tried it are tempted to over-simplify. You know my theory, my […]
Playing with The Neighbor Kid’s Toys
A Guest Post by Art Holcomb This is about the craft of writing stories in another person’s universe . For ten years – between 1994 and 2004 – in addition to my work in comics and screenwriting, I was among a number of writers asked to pitch story ideas to Paramount Studios in Hollywood for […]
The Learning Curve That Keeps On Curving
In all my years as a writer, writing teacher and blogger, I’ve never run into anybody who claims to know everything there is to know about storytelling. That’s because the more you know, the more you realize how complex and deep it all can be. Stories are like people, no two are completely alike, and […]
The Secret Weapon of Storytelling… Right Under Your Nose
It’s good to find an edge. Something extracted from the vast wealth of storytelling tips, techniques, principles and strategies already on your radar. Something that is rarely talked about. Yet when you know what it is, you see it everywhere. Once recognized and understood, you begin to see how it elevates a story into print, […]
How to Position Your Book To Go Viral
It is the Holy Grail of instant success as an author. The elusive grand slam home run of literary home runs. It is better – beyond – getting published, or even making a bestseller list. It is the dream. Bigger than your highest vision of The Dream. It is called “going viral.” For the Luddites […]
David Gerrold and the Cabin by the Lake: A Guest Post by Art Holcomb
“The novel is an event in consciousness. Our aim isn’t to copy actuality, but to modify and recreate our sense of it. The novelist is inviting the reader to watch a performance in his own brain.” – George Buchanan It was the late 1980’s and my writing had stalled. I’d finished college and I […]
Your Story: It’s All in the Mix
You may be aware of my penchant for analogies. A tool that paints a clear picture of the complexities and choices and skillsets involved in writing a great story. I did a workshop this weekend and managed to cram about eight of them into a single 50-minute lecture. Only one person fled the room. I […]
Elevate Your Story Through the Sublime – and Subliminal – Use of Sub-Text
All stories have sub-text. No exceptions. Because life itself is riddled with it. The real issue for writers, then – the real opportunity – becomes this: will anyone notice? Will the sub-text of your story contribute to a sense of tension, emotional layering and expositional opportunities? An under-appreciated truth: in a world full of genre-based […]
The Power of Symbolism: A Guest Post by Nann Dunne
by Nann Dunne Recently, I watched an episode of CSI:NY that had a scene that impressed me enough to stick in my mind. In the scene setup, the character Jo, a policewoman played by Sela Ward, accompanies a female witness home. Shortly after the woman goes into her bedroom to get some clothes, Jo calls […]
The Three Layers of Story Engineering, Architecture, and Art
Everything can be broken down. Plant and animal. Fact and fallacy. Art and science. Sliced, diced, eviscerated, deconstructed, analyzed, charted, graphed, melted, spectra-analyzed and debated. Sometimes this yields precision, other times a vague generality. Either way, from this process of breakdown comes illumination. Visibility. Clarity of purpose, design and effectiveness. And then… often only then… […]