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Articles PITCHES WRITERS' REGISTRY

Skill-Building Articles

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[ Lisa Dale Norton ] [ Lisa Lenard-Cook ] [ Rochelle Jewel Shapiro ] [ Neil Flowers ]


Lisa Dale Norton

Lisa Dale Norton as a regular monthly Authorlink columnist. She is nationally recognized as a writing instructor with a passion for story.

Lisa Lenard-Cook

Lisa Lenard-Cook is a regular columnist for Authorlink. She is an award-winning published author and writing instructor.

Rochelle Jewel Shapiro

  • THE ANECDOTE VS. THE STORY


  • The Spill of Grief


  • THEME


  • The Epistolary Novel


  • POINT OF VIEW


  • LITERARY DITTO


  • SENTENCES: THE LONG AND SHORT OF THEM


  • WHERE ARE YOU?


  • Mining Your Dreams


  • READING AS A WRITER
    As a kid, I carried home such an armload of books from the library that I could barely see over the pile. A crossing guard once reported me to my mother.

    “Your daughter will be run over if she keeps reading those many books.”

    It was more like I was overrun by books, but quite willingly. Books were life to me. They were so much more interesting that anything anyone around me had to say, including my teachers.

    Throughout my adulthood, I read voraciously. At all times I kept a pocketbook in my pocket in case I had to stand on a line or get on a bus or do anything else that might open a window of time to reading. I read and ate. I read and took a bath. Sometimes, depending on whom I was speaking to, I read and talked on the phone at the same time.

    But in my thirties when I began to write, the pace of my reading screeched to only a few pages an hour. Books that I would have gone through in a blink, I now stared at for hours, trying to learn just how the author created his magic. I’d look for certain specific things, and when I found them, I’d really take note. I’d underline, highlight, write comments in the margins, and fill up all the blank space between chapters with copying whole passages from the book. A book became a lesson plan for me, my teachers, my guides.



  • Dialogue
    I’m in line at Macy’s waiting to return a frame someone gave me as a gift. (Why does everyone think a frame makes such a great gift anyway?)

    The woman on line ahead of me says, “It looked like rain when I came in. Was it raining when you came in?”

    “No,” I say.

    “Well, it certainly looked like it,” she insists.

    “Oh, then I guess it will,” I say because it all seems to important to her.



  • The White Page
    What could set a writer’s heart pounding more than staring at a white page, worrying how to begin writing, what to say?

    No matter how much you’ve published, each time you start out, you feel like a novice all over again. Nothing you’ve ever done before seems to help. In fact, former accomplishments may get in the way because you worry that you’ll never be able to write anything as good as the piece that you just received a Pushcart Prize for. (Wouldn’t that be grand?)



  • Using Digression To Enlarge a Story
    In the introduction to The Art of the Personal Essay (Anchor Books, 1995), p. XXXVII, Philip Lopate writes what is true for a lot of creative writing, not just essays.  “The essayist tries to surround something—a subject, a mood, a problematic irritation—by coming at it from all angles, wheeling and diving like a hawk, each seemingly digressive spiral taking us to the heart of the matter.”  Two pages later, he adds that digression “serves both structural and comic functions.” 


  • The Writer as Rewriter
    One day I was working at my computer in my living room when I heard a voice behind me. My husband wasn’t home. My children had left for school an hour ago. They had probably left the door unlocked again! “You’ve set off a silent alarm,” I bluffed whoever was behind me in the strongest voice I could muster. “The police are on their way.”


  • Developing a Writing Practice

    When my novel was first published, I got a call from a neighbor. I thought she’d called to congratulate me. I felt so touched.

    After a hello, she blurted out, “How can I get published?”

    “Oh, I didn’t know you wrote,” I said.

    “I don’t,” she replied.

    I stood there, phone to my ear, silent, blinking. When I came out of my startled state, I said, “The first step is to start writing.”

    Now there was silence on her end.




Neil Flowers

  • Jump_Cut: On Screenwriting
    In May, reader Carey Abney wrote to ask whether it was possible to structure commercial feature films in ways other than in three "acts." He heard cinegurus recommend creating alternatives to three-act structure. Carey wondered if such as thing were possible.

    As we all learned in English Comp 101, every good essay should start out with a declaration of its intent and then prove what it says. Yes?

    So here goes, out on a long limb: No, Carey, three-act structure is the very being and essence of stories, and that applies to feature film narratives. Those cinegurus are talking through their hats—or through the end opposite their hats.



  • Jump_Cut: On Screenwriting
    Carey Abney is from Philadelphia, an active duty ITSN (Navy) residing in Newport News, VA, and a new reader of this column. He has sent in a question pertinent to all of us who write feature films and hope that they will be sold and produced. It will take two or three columns to reply fully to Mr. Abney. Here's his question.

    Dear Mr. Flowers,
    I have a question about your most recent column regarding three-act structure. Since I'm new to screenwriting, I'm constantly studying and researching how to write a great screenplay. In many books about screenwriting, the three-act structure is strongly recommended. But in contrast to books, I hear many writers, producers, and contest judges talk about juggling things around, and sometimes moving completely away from chronological structure in order to write an intriguing story. I feel the three-act structure is a great foundation for creating any sort of story, but is there more than one way to skin a cat?



  • Jump_Cut: On Screenwriting
    his column marks the one-year anniversary of “Jump_Cut.” In case you have just joined us, this seems like an appropriate time to look back and to sum up where we have come from and where we are headed.


  • JUMP_CUT: ON SCREENWRITING
    For the last few columns, we have been examining acts I and II of feature film structure. We took a good look at High Noon, because its structure is so transparent and therefore easy to see. Now let's have a closer look at Collateral, an excellent, contemporary L.A. noir thriller that would seem on the surface to be light years removed in every way from a 55-year-old Western. The two films are, indeed, very different in genre, locale, and the qualities each hero brings to his challenge.


  • Jump_Cut: On Screenwriting


  • Jump_Cut: On Screenwriting


  • Jump_Cut: On Screenwriting


  • Jump_Cut: On Screenwriting


  • Jump_Cut:
    On Screenwriting


  • Jump_Cut:
    On Screenwriting


  • Jump_Cut:
    On Screenwriting


  • Jump_Cut:
    On Screenwriting


  • Jump_Cut:
    On Screenwriting


  • Jump_Cut:
    On Screenwriting


 
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