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“And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.” – Anaïs Nin Good writing is a synthesis of ideas and instincts working in concert. Letting...

“Remember always that you not only have the right to be an individual, you have an obligation to be one.” – Eleanor Roosevelt People are always talking about how they need to be better, to...

Plot versus Theme Any writer can experience that moment where you suddenly realize that your “idea” of the story isn’t going to get you to the end. Maybe you had a plan, but now the characters have...

For any writer, here’s a question to ask yourself: “Why do I want to write this?” A student told me recently that he was writing his first novel in order to sell it for a lot of money. Though I fully...

“The outline is 95% of the book. Then I sit down to write, and that’s the easy part.” – Jefferey Deaver Many writers resist story structure because they fear it will limit their creativity and...

There is a particular comfort that comes from being certain. We can shut out the world, with all of its noise and confusion. And we rest in the assurance that we are right. Except that certainty...

“My aim is to put down on paper what I see and what I feel in the best and simplest way.”- Ernest Hemingway Allow the Protagonist to Feel Reluctance No one likes change. The unknown is scary. The end...

“Home is where one starts from.” – T. S. Eliot There’s nothing more primal than our quest for home. The dilemma is that our childhood homes may have been confusing, chaotic, or even violent...

Humor connects us. It makes us care. I don’t mean one-liners. Humor is not about jokes, but it is about human behavior. It’s a vital aspect of any story, adding depth, richness, and humanity. Drama...

  For years, my students had been asking me when I was going to take them on a retreat. Frankly, I’d been on creative retreats, and while I enjoyed the camaraderie, I was never a big fan of...

“While they were saying among themselves it cannot be done, it was done.” – Helen Keller The purpose of art is to illuminate the possibility for transformation. The goal of memoir is to make the...

“The unexamined life is not worth living.” – Socrates Years ago, I was on the phone with a prospective student, and he announced, “I will consider myself a failure if my book does not become a...

  “A book must start somewhere. One brave letter must volunteer to go first, laying itself on the line in an act of faith, from which a word takes heart and follows, drawing a sentence into...

“The smiles of the unhappiest are often the widest.” – Mokokoma Mokhonoana In Jerry Stahl’s memoir, Permanent Midnight, he shares his story of being a successful television writer by day and...

“Where did that come from?” I believe there is something we writers are collectively seeking. We are all attempting to convey an experience, a true moment, to tell a story that somehow...

What’s the point of an outline? Whether consciously or not, every writer is in search of a process. A lot of writers want to dive right into their first drafts and start amassing pages. Though...

A director told me once that if you put two actors together in a scene without directing them or staging the scene, the conflict would begin to diminish. If the actors were on opposite sides of the...

“Film is a dramatized reality and it is the director’s job to make it appear real . . . an audience should not be conscious of technique.” – David Lean Our idea of the story is never the whole...