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Showing posts with the label inspirational quotes

Screenwriting (and other) wisdom

I've been meaning to post something on here about how amazing the MFA workshop was in LA, but in addition to feeling like I hadn't yet found the right words, time is also something that's been a bit lacking lately. Therefore, I've decided to post my favorite quotes from the lectures. Some of the best scenes are silent. - Jane Anderson  Conflict is not inherently dramatic – a tennis match is a conflict. You have to care for there to be drama. – Paul Gulino Writing is telling lies that speak the truth. – Deborah Starr Seibel If the story doesn’t end when a character gets what they want/need, then the story wasn’t ever about them. – Jon Vandergriff Get yourself in the room – invite yourself to the meeting. - Laura Brennan (good advice for life in general!) Happy to help, not eager to please. - Alex Fernandez We need to push ourselves to show our vulnerability to the point of writing something that makes us want to puke. - Meg Lefauve.

Book Review: Selection from Create Dangerously

In my creative writing class we are also reading selections from various other publications. This week our selection was Chapter 1 from Create Dangerously: The Immigrant Artist at Work by Edwidge Danticat. In the chapter, she talks about certain parts of her Haitian background. She describes disturbing political incidents which occurred during the dictatorship of Papa Doc Duvalier, particularly the executions of Marcel Numa and Louis Drouin. She explains the significance of the event for her by saying, "All artists, writers among them, have several stories - one might call them creation myths - that haunt and obsess them. This is one of mine." She discusses, in depth, the chilling effect such times had on art, artists, and the sharing of stories. She describes a sort of cultural oppression that went hand in hand with the physical political tyranny of the regime. On oppression which vilified such accepted classics as Camus and Sophocles. She talks about how plays would be pu