Poetry: “A well-known circus man who was reputed to be immune from snake bites, died at the County Hospital after having been bitten by a rattlesnake.”
The Devil’s Advice to Storytellers, by Robert Graves
Lest men suspect your tale to be untrue, Keep probability-some say-in view. But my advice to story-tellers is: Weigh out no gross possibilities, Nor yet make diligent transcriptions of Known instances of virtue, crime or love. To forge a picture that will pass for true, Do conscientiously what liars do- Born liars, not the lesser…
Transcript: Tim Ferriss’s 17 principles for creating successful podcasts
What follows is an abridged transcript of Tim Ferriss’s podcasting advice from Deviate with Rolf Potts, Episode One. Sub-section topics within the interview include the following: 1. How Tim Ferriss Got into Podcasting 2. How to Frame Questions in an Interview 3. The Advantages of Doing the Interview by Skype 4. Deciding if Podcasting is…
The Specific and the Universal in Travel Writing
“Successful travel writing mediates between two poles: the individual physical things it describes, on the one hand, and the larger theme that it is ‘about’ on the other. That is, the particular and the universal. A travel book will make the reader aware of a lot of things — ships, planes, trains, donkeys, sore feet,…
8 Thoughts On Keeping a Journal When You Travel
1) A journal forces you to think clearly about the day “The journal calmed me and forced me to think clearly about the day. Often the day had been muddled with so many things happening one after another that the only way to straighten it out was to write about it, reliving it until the…
15 Ways Game of Thrones is a Master Class in Conflict-Driven Storytelling
The following is adapted from a lecture in my July 2017 screenwriting class at the Paris Writing Workshop. 1. All characters must suffer. No Game of Thrones character avoids misery. How they deal with suffering is how we learn who they are. 2. Obligation must be at odds with desire. No Game of Thrones character…
4 Thoughts on the Importance of Remembering Your Audience
“As a writer you have only one job: to make the reader turn the page. Of all the tools a writer uses to make a reader turn the page, the most essential is the plot. It doesn’t matter if the plot is emotional, intellectual, or physical — as long as it compels the reader to…
Love (by Lamplight)
From Off Assignment’s recurring feature devoted to the letters that travel writers pen during their earliest hours in alien lands, Rolf shares a 2000 letter he wrote to his new Belgian girlfriend from Laos.
You Reading This, Be Ready, by William Stafford
Starting here, what do you want to remember? How sunlight creeps along a shining floor? What scent of old wood hovers, what softened sound from outside fills the air? Will you ever bring a better gift for the world than the breathing respect that you carry wherever you go right now? Are you waiting for…
Couplets, XX by Robert Mezey
Don’t be afraid of dying. The glass of water Is quickly poured into the waiting goblet. Your face that will be of no further use to mirrors Grows more and more transparent, nothing is hidden. It’s night in the remotest provinces of the brain, Seeing falls back into the great sea of light. How strange…
6 Thoughts on the Importance of Storytelling
“In most cultures, stories entail causality and goals, and so that’s what listeners expect when they hear a story. This expectation is so strong that the listener will use them when remembering the story, even if the story lacked these elements.” –Daniel T. Willingham “The Privileged Status of Story” (2004) “By telling stories, you objectify…