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Shakespearean plays begin with the chorus telling us what we are about to see. They don’t tell us the whole plot but rather provide a context for the events that are about to follow. That is the ...

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. This moment is initially devastating and then, hopefully, liberating ...

“My aim is to put down on paper what I see and what I feel in the best and simplest way.”- Ernest Hemingway No one likes change. The unknown is scary. The end of Act One involves our protagonist ...

I work with many first-time novelists, and the question of voice always comes up.“Do you think I have a voice?” asks the first-time novelist.“Should it be in a different voice?” he wonders, as if ...

We’re all busy. We have day jobs, families, therapists, and Facebook. If you’re writing your first novel, you’re probably wondering how other writers do it.I t’s simple. Get your writing done first. ...

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

Writers often use experiences from their real lives in their work. It’s important for the writer to understand the “nature” of the experience, rather than his idea of what happened. Writers can have ...

Interviewer: How much rewriting do you do Hemingway: It depends. I rewrote the ending of Farewell to Arms, the last page of it, thirty-nine times before I was satisfied. Interviewer: Was there some ...

“Action is eloquence.” – William Shakespeare If we find ourselves editorializing, that is telling or explaining what is happening in our story . . . it’s “OK” . . . however, ...

Did Stephen King set out to write a bestseller when he wrote his first novel Carrie? Apparently his wife found the first few chapters in the trash and convinced him to keep going. Did Norman Mailer ...

It’s not just first-time novelists that struggle with getting their story from the imagination to the page. Every writer struggles with this. Here’s the thing: Our idea of our story is never the ...

Good storytelling is about having at least a somewhat conscious relationship to our ideal reader, and telling the story in the most compelling way possible. It is about understanding the most ...

Have you ever experienced great loss? Whether it was a parent, spouse, or friend, the experience pulls you sharply into the present moment. Nothing else matters, not the barking dog, the unpaid, ...

When writers come to a dead stop there can be a tendency to panic. It’s important to remember that our idea of our story is never the whole story. When we try to figure it out, we tend to dig a ...

Every open heart has an Antagonist When Gustavo Dudamel became the youngest conductor of a major orchestra, an L.A. Time’s journalist urged us not to get too excited about our newest, ...

It’s not just first-time novelists that get stuck. Every writer, except Stephen King, experiences writer’s block. Writer’s block is often an absence of information. The information can be related to ...

“A problem cannot be solved with the same level of awareness that created it” — Albert Einstein We often have an idea of the direction our story is going, and sometimes we discover ...

I work with first-time novelists all the time who desperately want to convince me that they can’t begin their first draft until they do more research. Research is important, and it’s also ...