Letters Remain

Category: writing

  • This American Life on Proposals and Pitches

    As a way to increase the quality of the many submissions they receive, This American Life staff offer some excellent tips on writing pitches. They go further, presenting four pitches that made it on air, describing why they succeeded: Each of these stories is a story in the most traditional sense: there are characters in some…

  • Writing to Subvert Audience Expectations

    Suggesting that “Audiences always think they know how a story will go”, Roz Morris of Nail Your Novel dissects Kathryn Bigelow‘s award-winning The Hurt Locker (spoilers galore) to see why a film that “[sets] up several conventional situations – and uses our expectations to pull us up short” made such an impact with audiences. Readers…

  • Writing and Preparing for a Speech (Tim Ferriss’ System)

    The Tim Ferris technique for preparing a speech. For those aware of the concept, you may spot a resemblance to the snowflake method (previously), as typically used for writing novels. There are also some non-structural tips in the article (i.e. “No one should misunderstand you. Everything you say should be clear”.) Organise the speech using…

  • Blogs as Books and the ‘New’ Bias

    We are prejudiced against material that doesn’t identify itself as ‘New’ and this is a problem not just with the majority of online information consumers but also the websites that pander to this ‘old media’ bias. Whether something’s “new” or “breaking” is a concern for newspaper writers seeking scoops. There’s no reason on Earth a…

  • The Blog’s Influence on Writing

    Philip Greenspun on how writing and publishing has evolved since the Internet and, specifically, the blog have become omnipresent in our lives: Suppose that an idea merited 20 pages, no more and no less? A handful of long-copy magazines […] would print 20-page essays, but an author who wished his or her work to be…

  • Fiction-Writing Rules, from Fiction Writers

    Inspired by Elmore Leonard’s lauded book of the same name, Ten Rules of Writing, The Guardian asks a selection of 28 authors (from Margaret Atwood to Will Self) for their ten rules of writing for the aspiring fiction author (part two). Elmore Leonard’s ten are included, and he summarises them with the following: My most important rule…

  • Comedic Writing Tips

    There are six essential elements of humour, suggests Dilbert‘s Scott Adams, as he looks briefly at how to write comedy: Pick a Topic: The topic does half of your work. I look for topics that have at least one of the essential elements of humor: Clever, Cute, Bizarre, Cruel, Naughty, Recognizable. Simple Sentences: Be smart,…

  • The Success of James Patterson

    In what is likely the most extensive profile of author James Patterson I’ve read, we are bombarded by a plethora of incredible statistics: Patterson outsells John Grisham, Stephen King and Dan Brown combined; he authored one in every 17 hardback novels bought in the U.S. since 2006; and he has written 51 New York Times bestsellers…

  • Dava Sobel on Writing Science Books Full-Time

    Reflecting on her career as a science writer (she started as a technical writer at IBM before graduating into science journalism), Dava Sobel–author of the award-winning book Longitude–offers some thoughts on what it means to be a full-time author of popular science books: Both my parents loved to read, convincing me by their behavior that the best way…

  • E-Prime and the Retiring of ‘To Be’

    A form of constrained writing, E-Prime strives to completely restrict the use of the verb to be as a way to prevent implications of certainty and objectivity. As part of the This Column Will Change Your Life series, Oliver Burkeman discusses the merits of E-Prime and unambiguous language. To think about and function in the world, [Alfred…