On the Editor Roundtable Podcast, where we analyze movies for story structure, the question of subtext comes up a lot. Subtext seems easier to detect in a movie than in writing because film gives us actors’ expressions, background visuals and sounds, camera techniques, music. In a novel all you’ve got is text. Words on the …
I wish the “Show don’t tell” rule would die a fiery death. It’s an arbitrary, misleading decree, widely abused in writing groups where it gives pedants a footing for unconstructive criticism that they don’t have to justify. It can push inexperienced writers into breaking the equally-misunderstood brevity rule, because sometimes showing takes a lot more …
A client in the early first-draft stage wonders whether he should spend time writing character backgrounds. It’s a good question. Personally, I have probably tens—maybe hundreds—of thousands of words in character interviews, backgrounds, childhood stories, 360-degree “performance reviews,” horoscopes… so you’re not going to hear from me that you shouldn’t do it. I’d just caution …
Should you spend time writing character backgrounds? Read More »
Available at last! Buy now on Amazon An Unacceptable Love Clergyman’s son John Waterfield is handsome, absurdly modest, and oblivious to the gossip swirling around him when he suddenly finds himself Regency London’s most celebrated new portrait artist. His success is assured, so long as he can hide his forbidden desires from society–and from …
“I don’t think I’ve ever read anything so beautiful.” Read More »
Story Grid Roundtable Podcast Team New! Now! The Story Grid Roundtable, a podcast dedicated to helping you become a better editor. Each week, I and four of my fellow Certified Story Grid Editors analyze a movie from one of the twelve main content genres, answering the Editor’s Six Core Questions…including (ta-da!) the elusive Obligatory Scenes and …
I got rid of my books a few years ago in a total home decluttering. This was at the thin end of the massive wedge that smartphones were becoming, and I was no longer reading much. Too distracted. And besides, I live in a very small house. Why cover the walls with bookcases? Anything I …
My book cover for Restraint began with a thousand crazy tasks, and ended here: Ninety percent of the saga—junk shop scavenging, spray painting, sewing, pinning, upholstering, dyeing, borrowing, eBaying and freaking out-—has been has been cropped or photoshopped out of the final cover. And yet everyone agrees that it’s all still there, under the surface. Even …
Exciting news: I’ve been contracted to write a Story Grid Masterworks Edition in–of all things!–the Western genre. One of Shawn Coyne’s most powerful Story Grid tools is his study guide to the Love Story genre, in the form of an annotated Pride and Prejudice. It was instrumental to me in completing Restraint. As a Certified Story Grid Editor, …
The turning point in my Story Grid story was right where it needed to be: at the Midpoint Shift, in the morning of Day 3 in Nashville. That’s when Shawn Coyne revealed his plan for disrupting the decrepit New York publishing model, and I realized that I was part of something way bigger than just …
