I Wish My Life Could Be Like

I Thought Of My Mother As Queen Christina, Cool And Sad, Eyes Trained On Some Distant Horizon. That Was Where She Belonged, In Furs And Palaces Of Rare Treasures, Fireplaces Large Enough To Roast A Reindeer, Ships Of Swedish Maple.

The Writer Is Both A Sadist And A Masochist. We Create People We Love, And Then We Torture Them. The More We Love Them, And The More Cleverly We Torture Them Along The Lines Of Their Greatest Vulnerability And Fear, The Better The Story. Sometimes We Try To Protect Them From Getting Booboos That Are Too Big. Don’t. This Is Your Protagonist, Not Your Kid.

Always Tell Us Where We Are. And Don't Just Tell Us Where Something Is, Make It Pay Off. Use Description Of Landscape To Help You Establish The Emotional Tone Of The Scene. Keep Notes Of How Other Authors Establish Mood And Foreshadow Events By Describing The World Around The Character. Look At The Openings Of Fitzgerald Stories, And Graham Greene, They're Great At This.

A Fish Has No Concept Of Water.

Appealing To The Five Senses Is The Feature That Will Always Set Writing Apart From The Visual Media. A Good Writer Will Tell Us What The World Smells Like, What The Textures Are, What The Sounds Are, What The Light Looks Like, What The Weather Is.