Posts from the ‘Writing’ Category
Long, long ago, on a hushed and snowy Monday night in December of 2019, a friend at my bar told me, apropos of nothing but my handwriting, that the hashtags #handwriting and #allthedifference were currently trending on something he called TikTok, which I’d never heard of. Three hours later, however, I’d downloaded the app. Some […]
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Suppose someone were to tell you that you could become a better writer in a single week — would you believe it? Me neither. And yet that’s precisely what I’m about to do. And more: I’m about to make a believer out of you. I tried this on a bet — and lost. Here is how you […]
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Have you ever heard of Lester Dent, nom-de-plume Kenneth Robeson? He was born in 1904, in La Plata, Missouri, and died fifty-four years later. His writing career spanned a total of thirty years — during which time he managed to crank out an astonishing 175 novels, or more. Still, despite such spectacular fecundity, the names […]
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“If you’re just starting out as a writer, you could do worse than strip your television’s electric plug wire, wrap a spike around it, and then stick it back into the wall. See what blows, and how far.” –Stephen King, On Writing I admit it: Stephen King has never been my cup of tea, and […]
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The novelist Hanif Kureishi — who teaches creative writing at Kingston University, and whom I’d frankly never heard of before I saw this article — has recently come under some fire for remarks he made to The Guardian newspaper: “A lot of my students just can’t tell a story. They can write sentences but they […]
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In an interview Truman Capote once gave, he said the following about becoming a writer: “The last thing in the world I would do was waste my time going to college, because I knew what I wanted to do. The only reason to go to college is if you want to be a doctor, a […]
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Actually, there are many reasons — many more than five — that I’ll keep reading your story, but there are also at least as many reasons I won’t. Like this seemingly infinite and jesting snore in the next room, which is most annoying to the insomniac that I am: (For example: He had nothing in […]
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“Do not start a story with the protagonist waking up,” says Joe Konrath. But with him here — as with so many other things — I must demur. Konrath’s peevish list of proscriptions came to my attention recently via Radical Roz Morris, who wrote about another preposterous notion Mr. Konrath (along with many others) has: […]
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Margaret Atwood: Hold the reader’s attention. (This is likely to work better if you can hold your own.) But you don’t know who the reader is, so it’s like shooting fish with a slingshot in the dark. What fascinates A will bore the pants off B. Writing is work. It’s also gambling. You don’t get […]
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There’s a game that certain writers like to play — and in answer to your next question, it’s not called Hide-The-Salami (although that one is popular with certain writers as well, myself perhaps foremost among them), but “Eavesdropping.” Here’s how you play: Sit in a public place. Sit near people who look interesting. Have something […]
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There’s a dirty little secret about writing talent which editors and publishers don’t usually speak of, but which I’d like to share. That dirty little secret is this: Writing talent doesn’t really exist. As a matter of fact, there’s no such thing as innate writing talent, and the most important trait a writer can possess […]
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There is a general formula (of sorts) to storytelling, but to be better understood, that formula is best presented in terms of principles, and not concretes. By concretes, I’m referring to these interminable lists of specifics we so often see, which when it comes to the art of story merely tell us what to do […]
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(c)Ray Harvey 2011