Know-how - BCGriff

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Know-how

A collection of 10 posts

Finding your best angles

Finding your best angles

I stopped going to my barber during Covid and, with the professional Andis clipper I used for my mustache, began giving myself an undercut. “You did that yourself?” people said over video calls. “It doesn’t look that bad.” “Wait till you see the back!” I said. But who cared

When laboring over a phrase or paragraph

Consider possibility that it’s superfluous. See alternate advice here [https://bcgriff.com/know-how/write-sentence-when-stuck/].

Don't feel ready to write?

A friend of mine used to be a substitute teacher. When she got the call in the morning that she would have a class that day, she wouldn’t feel ready. She asked another teacher about this. “Of course you don’t feel ready. You’re still at home drinking

When to stop writing each day

Someone in a writing group I belong to is working on a play. He’ll write one scene one day, another the next, then the two scenes don’t match. “How do you keep your writing consistent from one day to another?” he asked us. I told him rather than

Examples of the call to adventure

Joseph Campbell [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Campbell] in The Hero with a Thousand Faces [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hero_with_a_Thousand_Faces] describes a structure common to hero myths which begins with the call to adventure: > A blunder—apparently the merest chance—reveals an

The best place to start your story

Roman poet Horace [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horace] in his “Ars Poetica” [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ars_Poetica_(Horace)] (“The Art of Poetry”) says of Homer [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homer] and the Iliad [http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/6130]: > Nec gemino bellum Trojanum orditur ab

A heuristic for creating composite characters

Composite characters shorten one’s dramatis personae, tighten plot, and give anyone upon whom a personage is based plausible deniability. But how does one mix two people? One might as well mix last night’s spaghetti and meatballs with this morning’s breakfast cereal. I was daunted with the prospect

Don't confuse flow states and good writing

Flow [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flow_(psychology)] is what you feel when engaged in a task that hits the sweet spot between challenging and “I can do this.” When I shot my second documentary, there were days I was one with my subject. What I saw on the monitor

Two kinds of writers: prodigal v. miserly

In the trailer for her MasterClass, Joyce Carol Oates Teaches the Art of the Short Story [https://www.masterclass.com/classes/joyce-carol-oates-teaches-the-art-of-the-short-story] , Oates says, “Writers are like cooks that—they keep everything in the refrigerator and put it all in the casserole. Like, what doesn’t go in for dinner

How to write a sentence when stuck

When stuck for how to say something, write how you would say it, including all kinds of awkwardnesses, weird turns, and strange analogies. This might turn out a beautiful sentence that you can use as is. That said, a novel full of such sentences might read like Alan Hollinghurst’s