Top 5 Monday Motivation’s of 2018
Most of us agree with Garfield’s opinion on Mondays: They suck. A lot. To make Mondays just that much more enjoyable, All About Writing facilitator and teacher Richard Beynon composes […]
Monday Motivation: Sink your hooks into your reader – fast
I’ve spoken before about the implicit contract a writer strikes with her reader – a contract that includes such clauses as: I promise to tell a full story, paying proper […]
Monday Motivation: ‘Mission Impossible’ and the meme of the ticking clock
Idly in search of ideas that might amuse and instruct you, I found myself watching one of the interminable Mission Impossible movies, in which the utterly and impossibly intrepid Ethan […]
Monday Motivation: Here’s an addiction worth cultivating
I often contemplate the power of habitual behaviour. I observe it daily in our cats. One habitually sits with his front paws – I tend to think of them as […]
Monday Motivation: A single, simple premise
I haven’t seen Lady Bird, winner of one of the top awards at the Golden Globes last night, but I have read the script – and one of its features […]
Monday Motivation: Balancing act
The challenge I posed a group of scribblers was to write a scene in which a trivial disagreement masks much deeper conflict between two characters. How to insinuate the presence […]
Monday Motivation: Why do we write? Let me count the ways
Why do throngs of people around the world feel the urge to record their thoughts and feelings and observations, but, more than that, to shape them into narratives that engage […]
Monday Motivation: Characters need context
I had a chat with a television production designer recently. This is the person who’s responsible for the look of a production, which includes the set design, and the dressing […]
Monday Motivation: Into the clear light of dramatic truth
We’re about to cruise past Torghatten, a mountain on an island a kilometre or two off the Norwegian mainland, and just half an hour south of the Arctic Circle. It’s […]
Monday Motivation: A lesson in restraint and suspense
Here’s a lesson in restraint and suspense from that master of both, Michael Connelly: In Chapter 3 of his latest police procedural, The Late Show, which features a brand new […]
Monday Motivation: The bigger the story, the slower the telling
I’m now onto the sixteenth CJ Box novel which documents the adventures of his Wyoming game and fisheries warden, Joe Pickett. Why have I become so addicted to the series? […]
Monday Motivation: Turning lives into stories, ten years on
We’ve been ensconced in the Palazzo Albrizzi in Venice for a few days now, spending our mornings talking to writers about their work, devising ways over hurdles (straight up and […]
