Lots of great talkers are terrible writers. Put a pen in their hand and they become dull and inarticulate. Why is that? I’ll give you a hint: I saw a TV program once that showed kids selling goods at a farmer’s market in Brazil. They made change effortlessly and with near-perfect accuracy. But when researchers… Continue reading Write Like You Talk. No, Seriously!

Hey, let’s kick around so-called “Deep POV” for a while. It’s fun! Beating it up is almost too easy, but let’s do it anyway. The idea of “deep POV” is that if you take a stream-of-consciousness narrative and clean it up so it isn’t too unbearable, you’ve got something uniquely wonderful. (People usually define it… Continue reading Deep POV is Way Too Shallow

I grew up in a family of compulsive storytellers and conversationalists who engaged in constant verbal one-upmanship, so I have an advantage when it comes to snark. People ask me sometimes how one writes banter-filled dialog.  I think it works about like this: it would be the same as an argument if it weren’t for… Continue reading Banter: Swimming the Snark-Infested Waters