Over the years I tried several different approaches to character names. I’m still not sure which the best way is. When I started I just picked names “out of the air.” It turned out that wasn’t always easy to do, and some of the names were uninspired. Later I developed names that were similar to… Read Article →
Latest Posts Under: Ideas
I got a second draft of my short story The Gladstone Barrier done this week. I think it is much better, but I still think I’ll need two or more drafts before I think it is ready to post. I wish I could do it faster. I have trouble with some of the dialogue. While… Read Article →
I posted a new article this week about creative thinking. How to Think Creatively Note: The original post has been taken down. If you are interested in reading the article, let me know and I can post it on this website. The idea came to me because I was frustrated with the difficulty I had… Read Article →
Years ago, when I worked as a transportation planner, I would create backup copies of my computer files frequently as I did my work. I was always afraid that if a made a mistake, that I would have to redo all the work. That happened to me before I developed the habit. When I began… Read Article →
The Gladstone Barrier I was stalled on my second “transportation engineer” story for a while now. This week I managed to get started again. I am about half way through the first draft now. It seems to be harder to write than the one I did before. In part it is because I’m trying to… Read Article →
Apparently Kindle sales make up over half of Amazon’s sales now. I read a blog about the benefits of Amazon’s Direct Publishing for Kindle, so I had a look at it. Apparently some already successful authors are going that route rather than through traditional publishing. It costs essentially nothing to get published. They take part… Read Article →
“Show don’t tell” is one of the most common bits of advice I come across when I read about writing. I’ve always thought of it as good advice, although I do find it hard to do Recently I started to wonder if it is the way to go in a film script. Could it be… Read Article →
The Canadian election led some people to my articles How Would Proportional Representation Change Canadian Politics? and Should Canadian Taxpayer’s Finance Political Parties? I chose those topics because I thought that would happen. Note: The original post about Taxpayer finance has been taken down. If you are interested in reading the article, let me know… Read Article →
2011 May 4 Monday last week, Stacy Parks of Film Specific put a post on her blog about blogging for filmmakers. I made a comment about some of the challenges of writing a blog and she suggested that if your film has a particular target audience, that posts about their interests would be a good… Read Article →
I know I need to make the characters in my stories more compelling. I have read lot of advice on how to do that, but I haven’t found much of it very helpful. It seems to me that most of what I read assumes that you already have an intuitive understanding of what makes people… Read Article →
