“Show, don’t tell” isn’t just a writing cliché—it’s the heartbeat of immersive storytelling. In this piece, Clay Stafford explores how sensory details, specificity, and subtext transform simple narration into a living experience. Learn how to make readers feel your story, not just read it.
Great writers are always great readers—and not by accident. Clay Stafford explores how reading with purpose strengthens a writer’s craft, voice, and imagination. Learn to turn every book into a classroom, expand your creative vocabulary, and transform reading into an essential part of your writing practice.
How Hadestown Uses Timeless Storytelling to Captivate and Inspire Writers As I left the performance of the Broadway touring production of Hadestown at the Tennessee Performing Arts Center (TPAC), it left me thinking about the storytelling techniques that made it such...
Why A Trip to the Moon Still Matters for Writers In graduate film school, I first watched Georges Méliès’s short 1902 French film A Trip to the Moon (Le Voyage dans la Lune). At the time, I didn’t really appreciate all it had to offer. It’s a classic, for sure, often...
Deepening your characters’ motivations in the middle section of a story is vital to increasing the narrative's momentum. The middle section of your story, rather than sag, should be dynamic. It should further complicate the plot and use those motivations to create a...
Because of my background, much of my writing is centered around the southern Appalachians as a setting, a setting I often view as a dynamic character in my storytelling and certainly an equal participant in coaxing out the secrets of my characters. The areas close to...
A friend of mine, a buyer for a major bookstore chain, told me that when book sales reps come into her office, the rep has around thirty seconds per title to sell her a book title. First, as a writer, that’s frightening, but I started thinking about that. Thirty...
Conflicts are one of the central features of a writer. Unfortunately, or fortunately, conflicts run amok in the real world, and writers, as painters of the natural world, are left with a canvas that must be filled. But how? You write about all the complex characters...
Sometimes, who we think we are as writers is not who we are. The self-image we construct as individuals and creators is often shaped by what we want to see or believe we should be. However, our authentic creative selves lie much deeper and are frequently at odds with...
When I started studying writing, I thought there were rules. There are not. There are good practices, but there are no rules. If you are following rules right now, they are holding you back. When I started writing, like the Greeks, I thought there was some Muse, some...