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The Enduring (And Sometimes Creepy) Power of Fairy Tales
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This originally appeared in The Boston Globe on December 30, 2014. Fairy tales come steeped in gruesome and explicit imagery. In contrast to today’s politically-correct sensibilities, folk stories revel in death, torture, sexual perversion, and betrayal. But one tale by the Brothers Grimm went too far. In “Playing Butchers,” a man slaughters a pig…
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Hitchcock on the Element of Time
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In his interviews with French filmmaker Francois Truffault, Alfred Hitchcock constantly emphasized one point: Emotion. Good storytelling connects with audiences at the most visceral level. And what better technique to create tension than time? By setting deadlines, we create a race against time. By slowing time, we offer an opportunity to look carefully at…
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The Power of Beats
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Every story is a journey – from one distinct place to another, different place. So what goes in between the starting and ending points? A typical scene in a movie contains dozens of moments, which movie people call “beats.” Each one moves the story forward. If a moment does not move the story forward,…
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Use the 1-2-3 Code to Give Your Writing Clarity and Power
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Years ago, I went to paradise in search of the secret of youth sports champions. A team of work-class families from an old Hawaii plantation town of Ewa Beach won the Little League World Series in 2005. They beat the top-seeded American team, an affluent band of year-round players from suburban San Diego, and…
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Writing Tips from the Pros
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From fourteen eminent men and women of letters, courtesy of the Guardian of London, come 247 rules for writing fiction. My favorites: Be prepared From Geoff Dyer, a mind game, namely, tricking yourself into a good choice: Have more than one idea on the go at any one time. If it’s a choice between…
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The Power of Patterns
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Man is a pattern-seeking animal. To understand anything—from brewing coffee in the morning to understanding Trevor Noah’s jokes at night—we need to see patterns. When we “get” the pattern, we can understand complexity within the pattern. The catchier we can make the pattern, the easier it is for the reader to follow along—and get…
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Use the Character Dossier To Create a Memorable Character
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To set your hero and other characters on their journeys, know who they are and what they’re trying to do. Know their physical, mental, and spiritual qualities. Learn everything possible about their lives. Then give the reader the most relevant and, yes, the juiciest tales and details. Don’t just discover the surface facts of…
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Halberstamitis
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David Halberstam wrote sprawling books about politics, war, sports, firefighters, mass media, show business, and everything in between. Halberstam looked for the universal in the particular and the particular. His prose sometimes reached. Sometimes he wanted to get dramatic while describing ordinary people and moments. And as he connected one observation to another —…
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Presidents and Metaphors
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President Barack Obama and the Republicans continue to wrestle over the nation’s debt and everything else under the sun — tax rates, Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid (and, by extension, Obamacare), education and R&D funding, the national parks and the space program, and in fact everything packed into the monstrosity known as the federal…
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Dennis Littky Writes the Story of School Reform
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What if schools built storytelling and writing into every aspect of learning? What if students saw their schooling as a journey, as challenging and demanding as the adventures found in The Odyssey or Moby Dick or Mountains On Mountains? What if students explored their subjects like great mysteries, using all their gifts as investigators and analysts to…