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Week 6 Lab Advice to Writers

Collection of Articles from AdviceToWriters
(Carl Hiassen from Wikipedia Commons)
For this story lab, I read two "listicles" with advice for writing, Neil Gaiman's 8 Good Writing Practices and 22 Rules of Storytelling from Pixar. These articles were mostly just advice on forcing yourself to write and good storytelling practices. I liked that Neil Gaiman's article focused mostly on just forcing yourself to write. He focuses a lot on letting go of being perfect and just writing whatever weird thing you want first and then going back and fixing it. The Pixar article focused a lot more on the actual storytelling. A lot of the focus was on the characters themselves, making sure you have a character that people root for and has agency.

In addition to the "listicles", I read an interview with Carl Hiassen. I chose to read this interview because when I was younger I remember really liking Hoot. I guess I didn't realize he mostly wrote adult fiction so that was interesting to learn. I also liked the advice he gave about his characters. He treated his characters more like living people, saying that when he writes he often has to let his characters go where they choose. I thought that was a very interesting writing method.
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  1. SpencerKunzMarch 3, 2019 at 10:42 AM

    Hey, Meghan!

    I also read Pixar's list of rules for writers and I thought it was really handy! I also enjoyed thinking about my favorite Pixar movies and seeing how the suggestions that they had fit over the structure of the different films. I also think that Gaiman's tip to "just write" is valuable. Like the saying that "the hardest part of running is tying your shoes beforehand," sometimes just getting started on a story is tough. However, once you get going, it's so much easier to get into your groove.

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