The Hero's Journey: Joseph Campbell's "Monomyth" Theory explained by puppets using Adam Sandler films (and other popular movies) as examples. If this doesn't help your writing, it will at least help you smile!

You're welcome.

Have a great weekend, everybody!

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(video thanks to Lee Wind via Emma Dryden.)

Still kind of gobsmacked over the news yesterday. Okay, I'm not talking about the new Pope Francis I or that Google Reader is going the way of the dodo, because while that is certainly big news for their respective demographics (and, arguably, the larger world), my attention was snagged by what might very well be the tipping point for the creative ( Read more... )

I find that however I open my day affects the rest of my day. In my case, my morning is largely dependent on how the kids are doing getting up and ready for school, but when I'm driving them to their various destinations, I'm careful not to put on the news because--let's face it--it's not a good way to greet the morning. It's often loud and ( Read more... )

I'm sure by now you've heard the brouhaha over Instagram's initial policy change which implied (if not outright stated) that participants would be agreeing to allow the company the right to sell their private images for commercial use. The resulting hue and outcry was quick and decisive, prompting the CEO to offer a retraction later that day to the ( Read more... )

Dear Internetz ( Read more... )

One of the biggest things folks talk about in writing is cause & effect and the transition of the main character changing from Who They Were into Who They Are (at the end of the story). No good story is without change, conflict & tension rise like good dough from this battle between stasis and action, but it's the getting there that makes it happen ( Read more... )

Having just read SAVE THE CAT + having just read THE FAULT IN OUR STARS = bizarre revelation:

John Green actually wrote a character with an accent, a character with an eye patch, and a character with a wooden leg.

Coincidence? Hmm.

I've been reading a lot of good books lately. This is always a good thing, but one of the shared characteristics has been an interesting twist in the Space-Time Continuum, i.e. the structure of the novel. I find it interesting to read a book that could have started another way, gone in a linear fashion from start to finish, but instead chose ( Read more... )

It's May Day! Or should I say "M'aidez ( Read more... )

It's almost impossible to capture the feeling of NESCBWI. Try to imagine a giant roomful of the best writer friends you've ever had who you happen not to have met yet. Now add speakers whose books you admire and whose words you adore, who want nothing more than to give back to their community, who know what it's like to struggle and persevere. ( Read more... )