Tips

The folks on WriterL are recalling tips passed on by Jon Franklin. A few are worth noting.

From Adina Gewirtz:

Jon called it the "black box" school of deduction. That's to look at the outcome a person achieves – look at what he actually has done, rather than what he says he meant to do. Then try to figure out why he wanted that outcome, what that outcome did for him. Eliminate, to start, the idea that things happen by coincidence. Eliminate the person's protestations that he or she didn't mean for this or that thing to happen. You can always account for coincidence and accident later.

Brett Campbell:

When we see something that makes us uncomfortable, we naturally look away. But a writer (an artist of any kind) learns to use his own emotions as an antenna and, as soon as he detects discomfort on his own part, forces himself to examine the situation to find the source of the discomfort. That's where the story is.