Your Story… On Steroids
Steroids for writers. Hmmm… what an interesting notion. A magic pill that will make you stronger, faster, better and more successful, almost immediately. I’ve got just the ticket for you. And it’s not even illegal, immoral or, once you let go of some old school brainwashing, controversial. In fact, it’s not even debatable. This is […]
Another 1.5 Minute Workshop on the Six Core Competencies
Storytelling. It’s everywhere. When it works, there are almost always six separate elements – essences, really – that are in play. Sometimes you have to read a 400 page novel or sit through a two hour movie to witness this universal model at work. Sometimes you can behold their collective, congealed power in a minute […]
Let Me Fix Your Story… Before Someone Kills It
Fair warning, this is a pitch. If you have a story, regardless of its stage of development, and you’d like to see how it stacks up against the criteria and parameters of my Six Core Competencies development model – or if you’d simply like to know if the thing is working or not – […]
Why Structure ISN’T the First Thing You Should Think About When Planning Your Story
All this talk about story structure… it’s easy to get the wrong idea. Because in the sequence of revelations and midnight ah-hahs and pure flashes of genius that come with the territory of writing a novel or screenplay, structure doesn’t come first. It doesn’t even come second. But eventually it must come. Or the campaign […]
About NaNoWriMo – Three Ways to Thrive, One Sure Way to Suck
Beginning next week, if you hear what sounds like a flock of Hitchcockian birds descending on your neighborhood, that’s just the collective sound of thousands of keyboards on frantic overload. Because about 50,000 writers will be pounding away on a new novel, sweating blood to finish within 30 days as part of National Novel Writing Month. […]
Is There Seventh Core Competency?
In the creation and evangelizing of my story development model, the Six Core Competencies of Successful Storytelling, I like to tell people that there is nothing in the realm of writing fiction that doesn’t fall into one of these six buckets. Why? First of all, because it’s true. But also, when you deal in such […]
Story Structure — Just Possibly the Holy Grail of Storytelling
Storyfix is proud to introduce an 11-part series on the fundamentals of story structure. Following this Introduction, each day will bring a new post in the series. They’ll be filed in a separate category under Pages for future reference. Introduction One question pops up at nearly every writing workshop I teach: how do I know […]
3 Not-So-Secret Yet Spectacularly Effective Ways to Blow Readers Away
We’ve all heard – and I like to quote this one – that there’s nothing new under the writing sun. I’ve also come to know that if you rename something and view it from a new context it becomes startlingly fresh and powerful. Such is the case with these three little magic pills of storytelling. […]
“101 Tips” Preview: Tip #79 — Five Moments in Your Story You Must Understand Before You Can Write Something Saleable
If you’ve just arrived from MenWithPens, welcome. If not, check out my guest blog on that terrific writing site, run by a guy I really respect. And now for today’s Story Fix … No matter how you go about writing your novel or screenplay, there are a lot of things you’ll need to know about […]
Why You Need to Break the Writing Process Down
Check out my guest post today on www.WriteToDone.com. And if you’ve come here from there… welcome! I think all teachings about writing are good. Wonderful, in fact. Taken as a whole, the body of knowledge kicking around out there is astounding, and because there are so many views on so many of the variables that […]