writing & storytelling
I don't know if there's a specific thing, but you know it immediately. The minute I start it I know that it's the book I want to fall in love with. And that's the one I keep reading. I will read a hundred pages of something else, but I won't fall in love with it. You have this immediate sense of texture and place, and you're just inside it from the... See more
Agents & Editors: A Q&A With Four Young Editors
this hurdle I have to jump over each time I write: How can I say this more crisply? When I write (which is really just to say: when I think) it all boils down to one simple, but utterly excruciating question: What am I really trying to say here?
Isabel Hazan • distillation
Let go of self-delusion, which is maybe the hardest thing of all to let go of. Shape the thing you’re making into a pure expression of the thing you’re making: “Cut away, strip away the unnecessary, and strip away what people expect.”
Zach Baron • Martin Scorsese: “I Have to Find Out Who the Hell I Am”
The one practice I kept was writing. It made the cut because I can’t deny how many good things in my life have come as a result of my putting words out into the world. It also felt like a respite: one area where I wasn’t skeptical of my identity. I’m at my most courageous on the page because interrogating my feelings with words feels justified and
... See moreMolly Mielke • (self) concept
Oftentimes I will load a portion of a story with superfluous information simply to hide the one important bit of information that I need the audience to know but not yet recognize as important. I clutter the landscape so that the audience can’t tell what is important and what is not.
Dan Kennedy • Storyworthy: Engage, Teach, Persuade, and Change Your Life through the Power of Storytelling
Don’t switch Elephants. Simply change the color. Changing the Elephant’s color provides an audience with one of the greatest surprises that a storyteller has to offer. My wife has often said that this is my preferred model for storytelling, and she’s right. I’m always most excited about a story when I can change the color of the Elephant. “The
... See moreDan Kennedy • Storyworthy: Engage, Teach, Persuade, and Change Your Life through the Power of Storytelling
We need a story to help us navigate our lives. But it's possible to also see beyond the story to the mystery. It's not either/or . it's both/and.
Tim Freke • How Long Is Now?
Joshua has written a memoir Down From the Mountain Top : He adds a note to readers: “altered minor details,” “changed or omitted names” and adds this wise advice: “To remember is to reconstruct and interpret and this is as truthful a story as my memory can tell.”
Joshua asks
—Joshua Dolezal