This blog was originally posted by Steven James in Writer Unboxed. Reposted with permission. This blog so touched my writer’s heart I want to share it with all my readers. Twelve years ago I decided to sell out. I landed on an idea that I felt would be a financially …
Recent Blog Posts
Steven James
What Is Your Hero Pursuing?
We’ve all heard story is about conflict and tension. And that is definitely true. Stories about happy people living in Happy Valley don’t excite readers. Frankly, they can be boring. The story becomes a story when something disrupts the status quo. As John LeCarré once said, “The cat sat on …
How Do I End This Thing?
How can I end this story in a way that’s unexpected and inevitable? This is the third question from my blog on the Write Conversation, Plot Problems Solved in 3 Questions. The first two questions are explored in What Would My Character Naturally Do? and How Much Worse Can …
Perspective & Creativity
Orson Scott Card tells us “Everybody walks past a thousand story ideas every day. The good writers are the ones who see five or six of them. Most people don’t see any.” Steven James once wrote, “Creativity isn’t seeing what no one else sees; it’s seeing what anyone else would …
One of the Best Writing Books
I’ve just finished reading one of the best books on the writing craft I’ve ever read. Story Trumps Structure is an insightful, quick-moving discussion of writing from the perspective of an organic writer, Steven James http://www.stevenjames.net. This is a great book for people who don’t like to outline, who may find …