A typewriter is more than a machine that prints one character at a time to paper fed on a roller. photo: Dariusz Sas Imagine it lit from within.
Month: August 2014
origins of belief
Quarrelsome characters make stories interesting and unpredictable. And origin shapes perspective. photo Steve Hillebrand U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service Here is a docked research ship. Create two scientists with distinctive, opposing belief systems, and put them on the ship. Now show them in an interaction that is shaped by the friction between their perspectives. One grew up … Continue reading origins of belief
twitter recap for this week
For those of you who don’t follow me @ebszabo on Twitter, here’s what you missed – enjoy: #Write when it hurts. Capture your best. “A writer is someone for whom #writing is more difficult than it is for other people.” #ThomasMann #writer’sblock? #WriteNow offers supportive #mentoring, #coaching & #editing for writers of #fiction and #nonfiction … Continue reading twitter recap for this week
jumpstart love
Writing a compelling, visceral love scene can be the most daunting of challenges - how many times have you tried, without success, to evoke the eroticism, tension, suspense and thrill of first contact? The temptation is to make it too obvious, too easy. Or to fall into the trap of 'happily ever after'. We might … Continue reading jumpstart love
why write?
The best way to predict the future is to create it. Writing is a way to figure out who we are, how we got here, what matters, and then, to envision how we can do better. Cly-Fi needn’t be apocalyptic. While it may be difficult to imagine a kinder gentler outcome, it’s worth a try. … Continue reading why write?
flamboyance
Photo: American flamingoes phoenicopterus by Kat Spence The pink plastic lawn flamingo was invented by Don Featherstone of Massachusetts in 1957. A flock of flamingos is called a flamboyance. Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley wrote Frankenstein with the following writing prompt from Lord Byron in his residence on a stormy night in Switzerland, "We will each write a … Continue reading flamboyance
twitter recap for this week
For those of you who don’t follow me @ebszabo on Twitter, here’s what you missed - enjoy: A recipe develops character: show who he is by how he cooks: “As a surprise, he prepared Cherry Buttermilk Clafoutis” #CreativeWritingPrompt #GreatStory is defined by a #writer's will to inhabit #characters, live in #backstory, #dialogue, #action #CreativeWriting is … Continue reading twitter recap for this week
Final Flight
Do you wonder how our conduct on earth will define our future here? As writers, we have the power to imagine consequences and write them into compelling stories that can bring deeply felt perspectives and change minds. CliFi is a literary genre dedicated to doing just that. In order for the worlds we create in CliFi to … Continue reading Final Flight
Plan B
Who is this? Sometimes a character volunteers – just shows up and opens a vein on the page. The writing of them is almost magical, so fluid that it’s difficult to keep up as the scene unfolds and they behave and talk and feel and think like an actual person, outpacing our typing fingers. Let’s … Continue reading Plan B
1-2-3-go
Open a story with a sentence that incorporates 1 an object, 2 an action, 3, an occupation set the story here: open 'in the middle' of things, in the moment immediately following a life-changing event.
Szabo Creative Consulting 