Tweet Back in 2008, I was talking my good friend Julie into participating in National Novel Writing Month, and she expressed some concern that her writing wouldn’t be good enough. I thought about it for a moment, trying to figure out how to encourage her enough that she would go ahead with it, and at […]
Tweet You had to see this one coming! After a week spent discussing introductions, it’s only logical to make that the assignment. But, more than that, it’s fun. Today you get to start a story you’ll never have to finish. Give it flash, give it bang. Promise big, and use up your entire special effects […]
Tweet It was a dark and stormy night, when a couple of guys who were up to no good started making trouble in my neighborhood. True story. Nearly everything I said about introductions in Tuesday’s post, Negotiating a Connection, applies to Creative Writers just as much as it does to the Business Writers. The big […]
Tweet This week I talked about document structure and got into detail on chronology and point of view, and now it’s time to stop talking and start doing. Your assignment this week is to write out a dream sequence. Of your own. This should be as close to non-fiction as you can manage. If at […]
Tweet I’ve got a couple really simple rules for most of the new writers that I work with: tell your story from start to finish, and tell it from the narrator’s point of view. That sounds obvious, right? Well you’d be amazed how much my writers hate to hear it. My dad wrote his first […]
Our first writing exercises focus on the Christmas holidays! Head over to the new forums to write a fake complaint letter to Santa Claus, or practice with point of view by writing a blog post about Christmas from someone else’s perspective.
Your job as a person is to examine and understand the world around you, to empathize with new people in a way that lets you see them as real people (not just extras in your life story), and to comprehend the short- and long-term ramifications of events both in and out of your control. Your job as a person (no matter who you are, or what you do) is to be an observer, a communicator, and a creator, and every moment you spend writing you’re working on those things. Usually you’re working on all of them on every page.
