Yes, I am back promoting the late Gary Reilly. This July, my partner Mike Keefe and I released Gary’s 15th (all posthumously published) book. It’s called Jeremy Bannister, or the Ups and Downs of An Aspiring Novelist. It’s an unusual book because Gary wrote every chapter the same length–one chapter to a page. It’s about…
What does writing look like? Chances are you are sitting and typing. Or sitting and pushing a pen across a page. And you are thinking, right? Thinking and thinking and thinking. Your brain is working on the plot, evaluating the words you used to describe your protagonist, and judging whether your big twist makes sense….
Note: A version of the following post was written for Ireland Writer Tours. The week I had been invited to spend in Ireland leading discussions for a group of writers, in September, has been canceled. Ireland is still struggling with variants of the COVID-19 virus; there weren’t enough participants booked to make the week work….
I’ve touted the Scriptnotes podcast before. Yes, it’s focused on screenwriting. (I do not write screenplays.) But I enjoy listening to John August and Craig Mazin talk about stories, storytelling, and all things related. A recent episode (#501) was titled “Patterns of Success.” John and Craig talked about a variety of factors and traits and…
Could you take your work in progress, change every single word—and still tell the same story? Is it possible to write a novel without one familiar, cliché phrase? Or description? Or scene? How do you guard against overusing tried and true verbiage? Stale descriptions? How do you turn a stereotype on its head? Do you…