One of the most powerful ways to deepen anthropological realism in literature is to determine what your characters consider sacred. If you think about it, the answer to this question is what rules our lives; why should it not guide the characters you write? When I say...

Americana literature is storytelling that captures America’s character through its people, landscapes, struggles, traditions, and shifting dreams. The genre reveals America’s identity through lived experience rather than abstract or academic philosophy. One of the...

One of the tell-tale signs of a master storyteller, as opposed to a competent one, is not what is revealed in a story, but when it is revealed—the icing on the cake. Advanced writers understand something newer writers usually do not: the most powerful moments in a...

One of the fastest ways to inject life into a scene is action. Not noise. Not chaos. Action. Few tools change a scene’s energy as quickly as a sudden physical altercation: a shove, a punch, a grab, a chair tipping backward. Used correctly, a physical altercation...

One of the most important lessons a writer can learn about writing good dialogue, especially dialogue meant for actors to speak, is simple: dialogue must sound natural when spoken. Dialogue, if properly written, isn’t found on the page; it’s found in the air, spoken...

Most people think about accountability only after a project begins—such as showing up, meeting deadlines, providing progress reports, and doing check-ins to gauge your status. They consider the consequences if you fail to show up. But true accountability doesn’t start...

I didn’t realize when moving forward stopped being a conscious decision and became an ingrained habit. Initially, forward motion felt like discovery. Each new task I completed, each small success I achieved, fostered the sense that movement was shaping my future. I...

The first time effort changed my world, I felt it before I understood it. It wasn’t a dramatic moment; it was an impulse. We had few neighbors during my boyhood, but as I walked down the road, I saw wild onions growing in their yards. Someone had mowed their spring...

In that quiet moment, I realized I was no longer striving. For most of my life, I chased something I could never quite name. I moved against the ticking of an internal clock only I could hear, always aware that time kept moving forward. No actual Big Ben was telling...

I had been visible for years before I realized I was disappearing. My name appeared on programs. My work circulated in rooms I wasn’t in. I was introduced, quoted, and invited back. People recognized me in hallways and said kind, even effusive, things about my...

I realized I had become someone I didn’t recognize. It didn’t come with an announcement. It was a transformation unfolding in the most ordinary circumstances. I was standing in a doorway, of all places, listening to someone speak harshly to me about a matter that, at...

Who can turn the world on with her smile? I grew up watching The Dick Van Dyke Show and The Mary Tyler Moore Show, so I was bouncing off the wall, as a young screenwriter, when Mary Tyler Moore’s MTM Enterprises (co-owned with Grant Tinker) wanted my script. Mary...