Using Formula without Being Formulaic
Most creatives don’t set out to regurgitate remade versions of stories that have been told before. We want to boldly…
Analyzing Story
How to Create Tension without Overt Conflict
If you’d like to receive my blog in your in-box each week, click here. I have a confession to make: I…
Analysis: How Storytelling Makes the Story
If you’d like to receive my blog in your in-box each week, click here. My roommate when I lived in New…
Character Stakes: The Key to Making Readers Care
Stakes are crucial to story, one of the central legs of the holy trinity of character plot and stakes, because…
How Backstory Creates Story, Part 2: Building Forward
You can “build forward” in your writing to create fully integrated characters and stories: begin with what you already have…
How Backstory Creates Story, Part 1: Mining Backward
Both Succession’s creators and the uniformly brilliant actors who portray the Roys and their vicious little circle of cronies take…
Story versus Storyteller (Or Why I’m Mad at Gus Van Sant)
I know I shouldn’t be mad at Gus Van Sant. I don’t know the guy, for starters. But when I…
Analyzing What Makes Story Work (or Not)
Regular readers know that I tout the value of analyzing other storytellers’ work as the best way to improve your…
The Giddy Delight—and Incalculable Value—of Analyzing Masterful Work
Since we got back from our New York trip I haven’t been able to stop listening to this song from…
Why We Can’t Look Away from White Lotus
If you’d like to receive my blog in your in-box each week, click here. I’m a little behind the curve, but…