writing & storytelling
a good story, by definition, has to be smarter than the person who wrote it. Because if it’s less smart, that means the writer wasn’t writing a story but assembling a piece of Ikea furniture. Most of the masterpieces I’ve encountered were smarter than their creators, and often more decent and purely good than them, too.
Etgar Keret • So you think you can tell?
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”
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
I’m always searching for mystery, something unexpected and dissonant, something to be curious about.
Jon Ronson | Substack
a well-observed thing can become all the more powerful placed in the right context, the right literary framing.
Craig Mod • Looking Closely Is Everything
When embarking on a great project, start where you are with something small. JAPANESE PROVERB
Beth Kempton • The Way of the Fearless Writer: Mindful Wisdom for a Flourishing Writing Life
The significant story possesses more awareness than the writer writing it. The significant story is always greater than the writer writing it. This is the absurdity, the disorienting truth, the question that is not even a question, this is the koan of writing.
Joy Williams on Why Writers Write
A story filled with heart and humor. A story that expressed authenticity, vulnerability, and truth. This should be our goal.
Dan Kennedy • Storyworthy: Engage, Teach, Persuade, and Change Your Life through the Power of Storytelling
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?