The best way to get material: talk to people
Tips on how to improve your stories/writing according to David Perell.
I’ll be in NOLA doing two shows on Friday night (4/19/24). Tickets here. And I’m taping my special in NYC on Sunday (4/21/24)…
31 things author David Perell learned about the writing process. Some excerpts:
Talking to people is the best way to discover what you should write about.
The world doesn’t reward the people with the best ideas. It rewards the people who are best at communicating ideas.
Sometimes, the best ideas come from the things that everybody sees, but nobody takes seriously.
Improve your writing by being more specific. Don’t write “I got in my car” when you can write “I got in my ‘65 Mustang.”
Storytelling 101: Stories are built on suspense, suspense is built on high stakes, high stakes are built on a character having a strong desire and an obstacle in the way of them getting what they want.
The fastest way to improve your stories is to cut the backstory. Jump into the heat of the action.
Great writing is the art of compression. All creative work is.
Many of your friends will be afraid to give you harsh feedback. Remedy that by asking: “What’s the 10% I need to keep, no matter what? A followup question: “What’s the 10% I’ll cut, if I absolutely had to cut?”
The best writing prompt for when I'm stuck is simply “be more honest.”
If you like hearing smart writers geek out about writing, Perell has a good podcast (How I Write) on the topic too:
Me too! Thanks for this lead. (I believe all is story, even science. And Joan Didion wrote a whole book called We Tell Ourselves Stories In Order To Live -- which I really ought to read someday . . .)
Thanks for these tips. It just convinced me to prune the hell out of the article I’m writing this week.