1) Narrative structure can be found everywhere Narrative structure can be found everywhere: in jokes, lab reports, historical accounts, personal essays, songs and ballads, news coverage, comic books, movies, sitcoms, and ballets such as the Nutcracker that tell a story through dance. Some television commercials are mini-narratives lasting only a few seconds without dialogue or…

1) Allow healthy separation between you and the first draft A bit of separation between you and your script is healthy. After a few weeks, you might even forget every word that you wrote. That is a good thing. It’s important to look at your script with fresh eyes, as a new reader would. Reread…

A “close reading” is a detailed examination of a text to study its design. The goal is to explore how an effective text works, and consider the decisions and strategies the author used in creating it. There is no rigid set of rules about how one must approach a close reading, but there are a…

1) The story begins to flow once you pinpoint the right idea The book is the idea. Once you have that idea, it just flows out. This is perhaps the best advice I can offer. Taking an idea, a central point, and pursuing it, turning it into a story that tells something about the way…

1) Make the scene three-dimensional in the reader’s mind There is Flaubert’s rule that you need three particular things in the room for the room to become three-dimensional in the reader’s mind.  So that if we establish this box of Kleenex, that bottle, and that lamp — not in one sentence, but over a few…

1) Bringing a list of questions isn’t essential When it comes to interviews, I very rarely turn up with a list of questions. Almost never, in fact. If you’ve prepared well, and know something about your subject, the conversation just happens. –Tom Bissell, interviewed in The Rumpus, April 17, 2012 2) Let the person talk…

1) On the importance of reading to writing I read everything. I read my way out of the two libraries in Harlem by the time I was thirteen. One does learn a great deal about writing this way. First of all, you learn how little you know. It is true that the more one learns…

1) A character must control his or her choices within the movie When I see scripts that aren’t working, it’s often because that character really has no agency. Has no real decision-making capability on what’s going to happen next. Either they’re always responding to what the villain is doing, or what other characters are sort…

1) The letter form is a good way to warm up I’ve found that the letter form is a good way to get me going. I write letters just to warm up. Some of them are just, “Fuck you, I wouldn’t sell that for a thousand dollars,” or something, “Eat shit and die,” and then…

1) When you’re ready to stop, stop For the nonfiction writer, the simplest way of putting this into a rule is: when you’re ready to stop, stop. If you have presented the facts and made the point that you want to make, look for the nearest exit. –William Zinsser, On Writing Well (1976) 2) Your…