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If you’ve ever been in an artisanal bakery, you know the feeling. Inviting smells, brown paper packages tied up with twine, cherry tarts and cracked crusty breads… It all adds up to the impression that everything is exactly as the baker would have it. How different from a bag of pre-sliced Wonder Bread on a crowded grocery store aisle; that sad loaf of starch and preservatives doesn’t even have a …
[Read more...] about Are You An Artisanal Publisher? Why Not?
If you’ve been following our blog closely (and if not, why not?), you’ll remember our recent post on using the Myers-Briggs personality types to build your characters and influence the decisions they make in your plot. Now, that’s all well and good, but Myers-Briggs is just one of dozens of personality tests designed to sort people into different groups or types. Far, far older than Myers-Briggs …
[Read more...] about How Blood, Phlegm, and Bile Can Produce Compelling Characters
Few writers working in today’s America are as well known and respected as Baltimore’s Anne Tyler. Celebrated for her humanistic, domestic, and gorgeously observed novels about Baltimore’s middle- and working-class families, Tyler is the kind of single-minded writer who has found her niche and writes it very, very well. Indeed, much of Tyler’s success as a novelist (she’s won a whole host of …
[Read more...] about 5 Ways Anne Tyler Can Help You Improve Your Writing
Can writing be unhealthy? Under the wrong conditions, most things can, but what’s certain is that writing, even when performed with vigor, can still be unproductive. If you write purely for your own enjoyment, or you’re just building up your skills, that’s not a huge problem, but if your aim is to share your art with others, you need to know how to avoid the kind of writing that’ll keep you locked …
[Read more...] about Are You A Binge Writer? Here’s How (And Why) To Stop
With his Western novel The Sisters Brothers currently enjoying a big screen adaptation and his ‘tragedy of manners’ French Exit beloved by the literary establishment, Patrick deWitt is both a proven author and one to watch. Not only that, but deWitt’s story is particularly inspiring to budding writers – a bartender whose manuscript found its way into the right hands after he asked for a patron’s …
[Read more...] about 6 Ways Patrick deWitt Can Help You Improve Your Writing
By the end of the Coen Brothers’ The Hudsucker Proxy, things are looking bad for the protagonist. Corrupted by unearned power and driven to desperation by the antagonist, he jumps from the window of his office, tumbling towards the city streets. There’s nothing he can do to avert his fate, the movie hasn’t set up any way of saving him, and then... time stops. The hero blinks, unable to …
[Read more...] about What Is Deus Ex Machina, And Do I Need To Avoid It?
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