Creative Writing

If your book isn’t good enough, you aren’t close enough

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“If your picture isn’t good enough, you aren’t close enough.”

Robert Capa, War Photographer

Get what he means?

Can you see him with his camera in hand edging closer to the exploding bombs and spurting machine guns? Can you see him get close to the victims and their suffering and sorrow? Can you see him get close to the ones being responsible?

Now apply that to your book project.

Are you close enough to the characters? The pain, anger, pleasure, fear? Are you daring to go close enough to yourself?

The Craft of Writing

The But/Therefore Technique of Plotting

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Find boring scenes that may not belong in the story by listing the beats (scenes, maybe in some cases chapters) of the story, and if you can put a “but” or a “therefore” between two of these beats, you’re good to go.

If on the other hand you have to put an “and then” between them, you’re in trouble and likely creating a story that isn’t entirely glued together and as cohesive as it could/should be.

Productivity and Efficiency

On Failure

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Imagine a goal you wish to achieve. You see four different strategies to achieve this goal, but only one will be successful.

Given your knowledge and experience, you deem the likelihood of each of these strategies being the right one as equal.

The chance that you will pick the correct strategy on the first go is then 1/4 (or 25%), right?

Imagine that you start applying one of these strategies to the problem. Either you’ve picked the right one and you’re successful. Or, you’ve picked the wrong one and you’ve failed.

If you fail but get back to work on the problem again, you now have a 1/3 (or 33%) chance of success.

Your failure increased the chance of success.

Fail two more times and success is guaranteed…

If you fail, you’ve successfully found one way your problem cannot be solved.

Header image by Ramdlon, Pixabay, Link