Add cross-writing to your writing training as a way to use and build new creative muscles.
It’s that time of the year again! No, not election season. If it’s November, it is National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo). While I don’t plan to participate in NaNoWriMo this year, I do want to piggyback a bit on NaNoWriMo to share writing resources and tips daily throughout November, beginning with some interesting behavioral economics research …
Most writers and other storytellers are familiar with the advice to begin their tale in medias res (in the middle of things), but what, exactly, does that look like?
Andrew Haigh, writer and director of the film 45 Years, shows us in this “Behind the Scenes” video of a scene that occurs five minutes into the film, the first time the two main characters are shown together. As you watch it, ask yourself how the tone and point of view and details would be conveyed with writing.
We all have those days when we need someone or something to help us to see life differently, to change our perception and move us in a different direction, to dig a different rather than simply a deeper hole.
“I believe the road to hell is paved with adverbs, and I will shout it from the rooftops. To put it another way, they’re like dandelions. If you have one on your lawn, it looks pretty and unique. If you fail to root it out, however, you find five the next day…fifty the day after that…and then, my brothers and sisters, your lawn is totally, completely, and profligately covered with dandelions. By then you see them for the weeds they really are, but by then it’s—GASP!!—too late.”
~ Stephen King, On Writing