Advice — expert series

Can writers take a long honest look at their own writing? The answer is yes, but it's difficult. When we go back to read the words we've put on the page, we not only read the actual words, we relive the emotions we felt as we were writing. We see the characters in our minds. We hear them speak. Unfortunately, our readers don't have access to our emotions, our vision and our inner ear -- they can only read the words on the page. Whether the book is done or you're stuck in the middle, it's perfectly natural to be...

As a script consultant, Dr. Linda Seger has worked with more than 2000 scripts, from 'The Neverending Story II' to 'Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil.' Linda has also extensively studied the creative process, working with writers to jump-start their brains and emotions. Her most recent book 'Making a Good Writer Great' (available at The Writers Store along with Linda's previous books) focuses on creativity and how to awaken it. From her office in Venice, California, Linda offers the following words of advice to fellow writers: PUSH YOUR BOUNDARIES In so many scripts I read, nobody feels anything....

OK! You've got a terrific script! How do you get it read, and how do you sell it? The first step, of course, is to get good representation. One of the most important things to look for in your representative is whether or not s/he knows the marketplace. It is extremely important that your representative knows what the studios are looking for and the person at each studio who is looking for it. With the success of 'American Beauty,' many of the studios are looking for quirky, edgy, offbeat movies, which would have been very hard to sell a year...

I've never been good at telling the truth. From the time I first encountered stories as a child, I understood that they were meant to be manipulated, details added or deleted toward a desired result. I suspect the situation is the same for most memoirists. I suspect we have trouble with the unalterable truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth, and that we turn to memoir because it provides us with a legitimate way of lying. To supporters of memoir--writers and readers like myself, this may seem a shocking statement, a betrayal of sorts, ill-considered in its confession,...

Experienced writers know that plot and character are like Siamese twins: if one is terminally diseased, the other is doomed. While a solid structure is essential to a good screenplay, it fails to guarantee characters whose behavior continually seems both inevitable and surprising. The system of personality typing known as the Enneagram offers a powerful technical tool for developing original and dimensional characters. Familiarity with the nine basic types can help us sharpen conflicts between characters to make dramatic situations more compelling. Being aware of the connections between story genres and Enneagram types provides insights into why we are drawn...