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In my Travel Writing Classes, I love to visit restaurants with a strong sense of place. Though European restaurants often exhibit this connection with place, North American restaurants are making this a priority, too. Thus, it was a great pleasure …
Restaurant exemplifies ideal of Travel Writing Classes Read More »
In this summer’s Seattle Writing Class, “Writing for Story,” we’ll learn how to read in public as a writer. This is a necessary skill for anyone who wishes to promote a book or read in public. I was reminded of …
First person point of view remains one of the trickiest strategies for any writer, as well as one of the most effective and popular ways of telling a story. This class will provide key insights into writing in first person: …
The Self as Character: Writing in First Person Point of View Read More »
SCENIC LEADS These leads attempt to grab the reader through use of graphic detail and gripping suspenseful storytelling. These leads do not attempt to tell a complete story as do anecdotal leads, but they give the most appealing, eccentric or …
Scenic Leads the Key to Suspenseful Storytelling Read More »
ANECDOTAL LEADS Anecdotal leads tell a compelling story quickly and succinctly, a story which illustrates the larger point that the piece is making. These leads do not employ a lot of scenic detail, but instead rely on describing an action …
Anecdotal Leads: Tell a Compelling Story Quickly Read More »
“The easiest thing in the world for a reader to do is to stop reading.” Barney Kilgore, former editor of the Wall Street Journal. The opening is the most important part of the story. If your lead is not interesting, …
I had the pleasure of speaking at the annual Write on the Sound writers conference in Edmonds, Washington, yesterday. I talked about Quest Narratives, one of the oldest and surest ways of telling a story. Here’s some of my advice …
And as imagination bodies forth
The forms of things unknown, the poet’s pen
Turns them to shapes and gives to airy nothing
A local habitation and a nam
I was trying to write then and I found the greatest difficulty was to put down what really happened in action; what the actual things were which produced the emotion that you experienced…the real thing, the sequence of motion and fact which made the emotion and which would be as valid in a year or ten years or, with luck and if you stated it purely enough, always.
Ernest Hemingway
Isn’t it queer: there are only two or three human stories, and they go on repeating themselves as fiercely as if they had never happened before; like the larks in this country, that have been singing the same five notes for thousands of years.
Don’t try to figure out what other people want to hear from you; figure out what you have to say. It’s the one and only thing you have to offer.
Barbara Kingsolver
“The difference between the right word and the almost right word is the difference between lightning and a lightning bug.”
Mark Twain
