Posts tagged ghostwriter
Playing With Structure

Structure is essential to guiding your reader through your story. It’s giving information when it is needed. It’s shaping perspective on the events in the book. Structure is the scaffolding that holds up other elements of writing. It also gives you plenty of room to play. When you’re struggling with how things happen in the story, in the order they happen, take a look at what theme and value you are bringing to these events.

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Riddle Me This

Riddles require you to make up the context of the scene and find what fits. Stories build that piece by piece. There’s no cathartic emotional revelation in having the context given like this. There’s no story. There’s no value placed on this information. There’s no tension other than trying to solve the riddle. Stories require that the information we need – hopefully – comes right when we need it in order to make sense of what has happened.

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Whatever Worked Last Time...

Brian Eno has a card in his Oblique Strategies set suggesting: Whatever worked last time, never do it again.

That might be more extreme than we always need but the sentiment is a good one. Just because it worked last time doesn’t mean it would work again. And just because a client has one idea in mind with their story, it doesn’t mean that’s the best way to narrate their own journey.

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Wonder Boys & Writer's Block

The creative process is so fascinating. Over the last twenty years or so, I’ve collected a lot of different strategies and techniques to tap into the creative process. These come from reading books and interviews, talking with other writers and artists, watching documentaries, and searching out strategies that worked for my favourite writers and artist.

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The Wright Brothers

I have this picture of the Wright Brothers’ first powered flight on the wall of my studio.

The brothers struggled for years to get an aircraft to take off, to be controlled, to be powered. They changed designs, drew inspiration from other discoveries, and they crashed often. Orville broke his leg and four ribs. They failed multiple times. After another crash, Wilbur said that flight wouldn’t be able to be achieved for a thousand years.

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