After my first book Writing Out the Storm was published, I got a phone call from an executive at iVillage. It was a high-profile site and the biggest women’s web site in the world at the time. I was hired to be the writing expert and teach hundreds of writers. The gig included live online […]
Read the rest of this entry »Archive for the 'Jessica Page Morrell' Category
Add sizzle: Tips for potent dialogue
Dialogue electrifies and ignites fictions. It brings characters and conflicts into focus, especially when characters argue, coerce, and threaten. Here are a few reminders about how to keep dialogue sizzling: Skip the throat clearing, greetings and pleasantries. Don’t warm up; jump right in. Ditch the names. Write dialogue that creates consequences. If there are no […]
Read the rest of this entry »“Sometimes I get the impression that I write out of simple intense curiosity. It is that, in writing, I surrender to the most unexpected surprises. It is at the time of writing that many times I become aware of things, which, being unconscious, which before I didn’t know I knew.” ~Clarice Lispector
Read the rest of this entry »Remembering Mary Oliver
It’s Monday, a day off for many people as we honor the life of Dr. Martin Luther King, Junior and it’s dawned gray and wet. Storms walloped through our region lately with high winds and battering downpours. We’re now in for a week of quieter weather and I’m thinking ahead to new plants and flowers […]
Read the rest of this entry »Neil Gaiman on stories
Stories, like people and butterflies and songbirds’ eggs and human hearts and dreams, are also fragile things, made up of nothing stronger or more lasting than twenty-six letters and a handful of punctuation marks. Or they are words on the air, composed of sounds and ideas–abstract, invisible, gone once they’ve been spoken–and what could be […]
Read the rest of this entry »Immersive fiction
I was driving around during the holidays and heard a show on NPR discussing how Americans play virtual reality games. It was reported that almost 70% of our fellow citizens play every day. I was shocked by the number. Callers–game developers, writers, and gamers–joined a discussion about the current gaming scene. And the term ‘immersive’ […]
Read the rest of this entry »January, 2019
A new year, a new season, a new month. As for writing, every day is new. Keep writing, keep dreaming, focus on your goals.
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