Advice — advice

In a previous column, I noted that the magic bullet for writing success is to Be Good At What You Do. If you want to be a writer, learn to write. That earlier article practically guaranteed that if you became a good writer and continued to become a better writer that the profession could not ignore you. The question you might be asking, then, is 'How do I become a good writer?' It sounds simple on paper, but in reality, is it? How do we learn? How do we improve? How do we learn to do what we don't know...

What do we mean by Plot? Simply, plot is WHAT HAPPENS in a short story, novel, play or film. No more, no less. It isn't description or dialogue, and it certainly isn't theme. In the best stories, plot grows organically out of character, rather than being imposed from above. Specifically, plot is the result of choices made by characters in a story, especially the story's protagonist, or main character. Even if action is not the most compelling feature of the story to you, the reader must always want to know -- actually NEED to know -- what happens next. Yes,...

There are hundreds of ways your heart can break in Hollywood. The good news is that there are hundreds of ways you can heal it as well. Here are a few to utilize when you're just starting out. Have you seen the bumper sticker that reads 'Just Say No To Hollywood'? If you can do that, hallelujah. However, if you have a dream you want to come true, if you long to create a larger life for yourself, if you have a burning Hollywood desire, you can get from aspiring to acquiring. Pennies From Heaven This might be your first...

I loved The Matrix -- loved the action, loved the situation and characters, but most of all, I loved the idea behind the film. It was Samuel Taylor Coleridge, the 19th century poet and literary critic, who coined the concept known as 'the willing suspension of disbelief.' What he says is basically this: when we, the viewer, reader or audience, approach a work of art, we must leave our own personal beliefs, our own personal perception of reality, behind so we can approach the work on its own merits, on its own level. In other words, we must 'willingly suspend...

If you could sit down in a chair next to the editor of work by James Baldwin, Elia Kazan, Jack Higgins, Jacques Barzun, David Frost, Budd Schulberg, Dylan Thomas and Lionel Trilling, what could that editor say that would be immediately helpful to you in your work? If you're a film writer or a novelist, would there be a benefit in sitting down with the man whom Kazan in his autobiography called his producer and director. (Kazan may have been the only American to hit home runs in all three fields, film, theater and fiction. He directed five Pulitzer-prize-winning plays,...