Save the drama for the page
Save the drama for the page or the stage or the screen. Meet your life more calmly. ... Read on
Our diseases
Carl Jung says we’ve turned our gods into diseases. Our doctors into priests, our hospitals into cathedrals of miracles. ... Read on
Creative ceremonies and rituals
Creating and using a ceremony or ritual is a simple but powerful way to reduce your experience of anxiety. For many people lowering the lights, lighting candles, putting on ... Read on
Positive and negative
Stories work better with a real play-off of positive and negative charges. Something good happens, and then something bad. Then something even better than before, and then something even worse ... Read on
Advice to a floundering journalism graduate
Take Cary Tennis’ advice to a floundering journalism graduate unable to get work. And then, with the irony that cloaks us against utter nihilism, we think, if only we were ... Read on
Berlin bombing raid
Ed Murrow on a bombing raid over Berlin, 1944. I began to see what was happening to Berlin. The small incendiaries were going down like a fistful of white rice ... Read on
PULLQUOTE
READ “BOSCUTTI’S DON SIMPSON” NOVEL ONLINE BE NOTIFIED WHEN THE NOVEL IS LAUNCHED ON AMAZON ... Read on
The protagonist
The protagonist is the character that suffers the most. ... Read on
Bergen Belsen
Richard Dimbleby at Bergen Belsen, 1945. There were perhaps a 150 of them, all so thin that their skin glistened like stretched rubber on their bones. Some of the poor ... Read on
Sound advice
Take Alan Little’s advice on writing for radio Try to use old words, words that reach into the very core, the very oldest part of the language. They have the ... Read on
How to write a Hollywood comedy
Here’s how the “Dinner for Schmucks” script was crowd-sourced for gags and laughs. Paramount executives view the 1998 French farce “Le Diner de cons” and basically laugh their asses ... Read on
Notional content
In the most reductionist fashion there’s the holy trinity of structure, character and dialogue; and of course the crucial if more ephemeral notions of authenticity, voice, theme, and ... Read on
Henry Jenkins says it best
Each medium does what it does best – so that a story might be introduced in a film, expanded through television, novels, and comics, and its world might ... Read on
“BOSCUTTI’S DON SIMPSON” (serial novel)
Don Simpson was a studio super producer who partnered with Jerry Bruckheimer and, well, killed cinema. Replaced ambiguity and nuance with unstoppable heros, blinding cuts and sound so loud it ... Read on
“BOSCUTTI’S DON SIMPSON” (serial novel vo)
It’s an experimental online serial novel about the legendary bad boy movie producer. It’s in his voice. It pushes the narrative to a more cinematic form to tell ... Read on
“BOSCUTTI’S DON SIMPSON” (draft manuscript)
How does Stefano Boscutti bring Don Simpson to life? He researches and outlines and cuts and orders and edits and reorders and trims and amalgamates (and manglemates) and pushes and ... Read on
A trapped child
A trapped child is uncomfortable to write, but compelling to watch. ... Read on
Don DeLillo keeps it real
Maria Nadotti asks Don DeLillo a couple of questions about post-modern novels and whether faction will ever get any traction? Maria Nadotti: Do you approve of their being described as ... Read on
What’s in a cameo?
Carved precious stone in a way to reveal the underlying color from the Italian word cammeo in 13c century which derived from Latin cammæus and perhaps originally from Arabic ... Read on