Advice — jeffrey alan schechter

How embarrassing is it for a writer to forget to write a chapter of his or her own book? Especially, a book about…uh…writing?Back when my book on story structure, My Story Can Beat Up Your Story!, was in the planning stage I knew that I wanted to accomplish two things: first, I wanted to clearly detail the understanding of story structure that I had developed and field tested over the last twenty years of being a professional writer and second, I wanted to NOT write a book of screenwriting tricks. The last words I wanted to see in my book...

Question: The first five pages of my script contain a lot more movement than speech. Because of this, it's exceeding the one-page-per minute rule. It just seems to take me more pages to describe action than it does for dialogue. Is this a common problem? Do readers take this into account? Can you give me a bit of advice to either put my mind at ease or teach my to overcome this? G.K. Brothers, KS Jeffrey Schechter responds: Don't get too hung up on the one page per minute rule. While you're right that description can sometimes read slower (or...

Our reader Sara asks: As a new writer trying to get a handle on what is SEEN ONLY, I find getting my character's feelings and objectives across ... challenging. How much latitude can be taken in such descriptions? What about adjectives and adverbs? I realize one shouldn't use 'Kelly's playful entrance floods him with a long-forgotten sense of whimsy. The other board members do not approve.' -- But what about, 'Kelly impishly skips to her chair. The stuffed shirts around the shiny mahogany conference table glare disapprovingly, except Brian, who smiles in awe.' -- or should it simply be, 'Kelly...