Transform Your Protagonist and Anchor Story to a Core Theme
Highlights from the interview: 1) Your main character has to transform. 2) Doesn't matter how interesting the character is: nobody wants to read 300 pages about someone who's the same at the end as they were in chapter one. 3) So long as the writing works, you don't need to understand why. In that way, it's like music. If there's a beat that gets people's feet tapping, keep rolling with it. 4) Know the ending of your book before you start writing it. You don't have to know the middles, and you can even change the beginnings, but you need to know what North Star you're sailing toward. 5) Start with a theme, then build the story around it. Know that big idea, remember that big idea, and stay tethered to that big idea. 6) Treat writing like a job, and don't outrun your gas tank. Get up, open a vein, let it bleed, then come back the next day. For Mitch, it's three hours of writing per day and rarely any more. 7) The worst thing a reader can say is: "I got lost." 8) Humility in the face of God opens up a different language. When you stop thinking about how you, the writer, can write something beautiful, and instead marvel at creation, words take on a beauty that's hard to manufacture.
Write Human: Embrace Vulnerability, Trim Excess, Trust Editors
Some highlights from the interview: 1) "The point is not to try harder; it's to resist life less." 2) "Reverence is about constantly asking yourself: how alive am I willing to be? It hurts to be fully alive. It means taking...
Reached 250K Subscribers and 1M Monthly Views
Hit two YouTube milestones over the weekend: 250,000 subscribers and the channel's now doing more than 1 million views per month https://t.co/1X7A1COzoi
Resist Life Less: Write Bird‑by‑Bird, Not Harder
Anne Lamott is the queen of writing teachers. Ask 100 writers for their favorite book about the craft, and her book, Bird by Bird, will top the list. Everybody who's tried to make a work of art knows how loud...
Master Children’s Storytelling: Tish Rabe’s 40‑Year Blueprint
Tish Rabe took over for Dr. Seuss after he passed away. Now she's written more than 200 children's books over the past 40 years. This is a conversation about everything she's learned about how to tell stories, create characters, and rhyme...
Great Writing Finds Detail, Empathy, and Real Problem‑Solving
My favorite quotes from this interview with Wright Thompson: - Profiles are about figuring out what is a central complication of somebody's life and how, on a daily basis, they go about solving it. - “A great detail will do the...
Writing Demands Discipline, Audience Focus, Not Formulas
The standout quotes from this interview: 1) "If you write a book and nobody reads it, have you written a book? You’ve got to include the audience in the calculation." 2) "I’m pretty sure that writing is not teachable." 3) "Anything worthy, anything...
Embrace Slowness, Expertise, and Magic Over Cool Trends
Some highlights from this interview: - "We need a slowness revolution in our whole culture right now." - "If you want to be a non-fiction writer, you must also become an expert in something." - "The biggest challenge for a music writer...
AI Authorship Suspicion Becomes Everyday Reality
Wild that we live in a world where the first thing I think whenever I read a piece of writing is "did AI write this" but here we are and it's here to stay
Blank Street: Hollow Branding Mirrors Modern Consumer Culture
Blank Street is the coffee shop you'd make if you asked ChatGPT to create a brand for you. The Helvetica font, matte green color, and even the word 'Blank' are designed to appeal to everybody, everywhere and as hollow as...
Murder Reveals a City: Connelly’s Telling Details
Michael Connelly has written 40+ novels, sold ~100 million books, and is the man behind TV series like Bosch and The Lincoln Lawyer. That makes him one of the most popular crime fiction writers in the world. He says: "Every...