Have people expect your writing. This is another reason blogs are fantastic: if you build up an audience, you feel the pressure of their expectations. This pressure is a good thing — it keeps procrastination from taking over your life. You know the audience expects you to write, so you get off your butt and […]
Using Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets as a guide, we learn secrets of surprisingly great writing. Loose Ends (Chapters 14, 15, & 16) The start of chapter 14 looks like it’s going to be another Quidditch match but another attack has occurred. And since Hermione departed from the boys to go to […]
One of the things is worth pointing out about Harry Potter And The Chamber Of Secrets – and this doesn’t particularly pertain to chapter 13, it’s basically constant throughout – is the unique voices of the characters. When you are facing the challenges of writing for three or more characters, often your reader will say […]
I’m using Harry Potter and the Chamber Of Secrets to show examples of great storytelling that you can use in your writing. The transition from chapter 11 to chapter 12 is a split scene really for drama, not necessity. End of 11: this must be where Dumbledore lives. Start of 12: they knock on the […]
I like Christmas music. In fact, I love it. Oh, there are lots of reasons to dislike Christmas music. It’s played too much at the mall starting at Halloween, for pete’s sake; and radio stations tend to beat it to death by ramming the same five songs down our throats. And some folks have to […]
“A writer lives, at least, in a state of astonishment. Beneath any feeling he has of the good or evil of the world lies a deeper one of wonder at it all. To transmit that feeling, he writes.” William Sansom
Fear stops most potential writers. Most people don’t write (publicly at least) because they’re afraid their writing will suck. Well, it will. Everyone sucks at first. You don’t get better at something by sitting on your hands. Suck it up, put yourself out there. You won’t have many readers at first, when you suck, but […]
Enjoy another Christmas post from years past and tell us about one of your holiday traditions (or a failed one). -Dan Christmas 2010 – Savvy was 9 months old On top of making Savvy’s 1st Christmas memorable because there was now a baby around when there never had been before, and all our efforts to […]
This is a long one but bear with me. I’ll come through in the end. Probably. The world is not howling for my thoughts on the Harry Potter books. I know this. Last week, I published a series of blog posts analyzing J. K. Rowling’s book Harry Potter And The Sorcerer’s Stone – and […]
DAN ALATORRE