The 90-Day Novelists began writing their first drafts a couple of weeks ago. Through this workshop we are each discovering our own unique process, and more importantly, we are learning to trust that it is valid. Every writer has their own way of working, a process that has to be developed and honed over many ...

The 90-Day Novel, 90-Day Screenplay, and 8-Week Memoir telecourse workshops all begin next month. Below are ten suggestions for anyone who is setting out to write a novel, memoir, or screenplay. Some are obvious, while others are perhaps less so. 1) Write everyday. No matter what. The simple act of moving a pen across a ...

“I have no special talents. I am only passionately curious.” – Albert Einstein What do you feel passionate about? What is your position on justice, authenticity, self-authority, the need for community, or the lost rights of left-handed people? It is through investigation of the things we feel passionate about that we come to discover a ...

Last week in one of my workshops we found ourselves discussing the difference between writing from the head and writing from the body. We tend to think of writing as a sedentary activity, engaging our intellect, but it’s not. We are engaging our imagination, which involves a full-body experience. Unless we are experiencing the story ...

Filming my directorial debut, Interior Night, was an exhilarating and exhausting experience. I’d seen the movie a hundred times during editing, and after so many viewings it was hard to have much objectivity, yet I was required to continue making creative decisions. The thing that helped me through the process was returning to the question: ...

Regardless of the medium, your reader is not interested in what your character is feeling. Seriously. In fact, if you tell your reader that Bill felt sad, dejected, elated, euphoric, or glum, your reader will begin to feel irritated. Why? Because in the context of story, feelings don’t mean anything, and the purpose of story ...

“The curious are always in some danger. If you are curious, you might never come home.” – Jeanette Winterson When my son was three years old, he was Captain Hook for Halloween. It was fascinating to watch him. He cared way more about playing pretend than he did about the candy. It would have been ...

One thing that has been coming up a lot in my classes is the tendency for writers to “figure out” their plot. This is due, at least in part, to story structure being taught by story analysts as a formula, which can lead to frustration and interminable rewrites. The process of creating a story is ...

“I’ve given my memoirs far more thought than any of my marriages. You can’t divorce a book.“—Gloria Swanson In writing fiction we inevitably come to that moment that is lifted directly from our real life, but fidelity to real events can create a block in the rewrite. In an attempt to be faithful to the ...

I hope you’re enjoying your spring. My post this week is actually a list I call 12 Maxims of The 90-Day Novel. These are twelve things to consider while writing your first draft: 1) When we stay out of the result, we move in the direction of our story. 2) Story involves a transformation. There ...

When we think of our favorite movies, there is invariably an element that is so novel, so surprising, that it ignites our imagination. Think of the character Hannibal Lecter in Silence of the Lambs. He is not the stereotypical shambling, schizophrenic serial killer but a thoughtful, erudite doctor, a psychiatrist. When paired with the character ...

The publishing industry has undergone tremendous changes over the years. “Mid-list” writers who relied on decent advances from their publishers have found themselves shut out of the big publishing houses — not through lack of talent, but because they have yet to write a blockbuster. This has led to confusion and disillusionment among many authors ...

Everyone has a story. It takes courage to tell it, be it memoir or fiction, because there comes a point where we must separate the facts from the truth. The challenge for the storyteller lies in distilling events to their essential meaning. When we scratch the surface of our story and begin to ask “why” ...

When my son, Ray, was first learning to speak, there were so many new words each day – the syntax often fascinating and occasionally perverse. He also had a sophisticated sense of humor. He called his Winnie-the-Pooh bear “Pooh” and when I asked him the name of his favorite teddy bear, he grinned and said ...

When I did a book tour for my first novel, someone asked, “Have you sold the film rights?” And when I said yes, there was this gasp, like I’d been showered with pixie dust because Hollywood wanted my story. Some of the best works of fiction deserve never to be cast and photographed; to do ...

I grew up in a very bright, academic family, but at times I felt alone. My family members were very logical, reasonable people. I was not. I was more interested in the nature of things and the unseen than I was in hard evidence or statistics. I never trusted statistics, because in my mind, they ...

The challenge in writing a memoir is that self-examination is not typically meant to be shared. The goal in writing a dynamic memoir lies in offering a transformative experience for our protagonist (our self) by making the personal universal. We all have the story that we tell, either to our self or others, and although ...

PROXIMITY Do our characters have to be two thousand miles apart, or three miles apart? If we are trying to convey a sense of distance, remember that distance is relative. Let’s say that our protagonist lives in Los Angeles while her mother lives in Akron. In the first draft, the mother flits in and out ...

Story is an argument. The theme (or dramatic question) is the thesis statement, and the story is the argument played out. Any argument requires opposing forces. These forces manifest as our antagonists. Antagonists are any characters that stand in the way of our hero getting what he wants. Antagonists are not necessarily villains. In 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 HOLD THE STORY LOOSELY Our idea of the story is never the whole story. The act of writing a screenplay is a way of developing ...

Forward, he cried From the rear And the front ranks died. Pink Floyd (Us and Them)   Hi Writers, We can tell a whole world in a sentence.  The rewrite is where we polish our prose until it gleams.  We remove all that does not belong in order to experiencewhat remains.  In the rewrite, we ...

  At the heart of every story lies a dilemma. It is not a question of whether or not our protagonist has a dilemma, but rather, how effectively it has been explored. By exploring our protagonist’s dilemma, we are led to the most dynamic version of our story. The dilemma is our story’s source, from ...

  I think there are times, as a storyteller, that I can be so bull-headed about what I want to express, that I end up pushing an agenda rather than telling a story.  I create “good guys and bad guys,” and in so doing, my writing becomes general, turgid, boring.  This may seem obvious, but ...

“Be curious, not judgmental.” – Walt Whitman Hi Writers, A fatal mistake many writers make in beginning a new story, is allowing themselves to be seduced by their premise. They set about trying to figure out their plot at the expense of allowing their characters to live. It is crucial to understand that character suggests ...